A Critical Review
I think this paper deserves a wider viewing than it's likely to get on the library listserves. If you have some time to read it, you may agree.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Business vs. Academic Models (or, Books and Libraries vs. Google)
This paper by librarian Thomas Mann, Ph.D., is circulating now among the library staff at my institution (and others, I'm sure):
Mann provides a number of goods simultaneously: a succinct defense of libraries and books in the face of presumed competition from Google, et al; a refutation of that competition; a definition of scholarship as opposed to "information seeking;" some spunky humor, good quotes and a few classical Greek references.
I think this paper deserves a wider viewing than it's likely to get on the library listserves. If you have some time to read it, you may agree.
I think this paper deserves a wider viewing than it's likely to get on the library listserves. If you have some time to read it, you may agree.
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In one of my avatars, I existed as General Collections Coordinator in the library of a small university - distinguished by the fact of being the regional depository for the Federal Publications hard copies, and also because it held the archived collections of a well known sociological study began in the 1920s. It was part of my job description to assist in the "change over" from traditional cataloging to automation. A fortunate assignment in one regard, because I learned to love computers and the internet and have established some true friendships in the the course of that work.
I also presided over "general collections" during an era in which the then Dean of Libraries was intent on bringing the library forward into the land of "business model book storage." The business model resulted in the creation of a rigid "vertical chain of command" ... read that true bureauacracy ... and the chance to understand first hand how it is that government is able to function without recourse to human participation.
It also taught a good deal about the loss of the human element in the *art* of cataloging, and painted in grim colors what it means to lose that "little ole cataloger" toiling away in a dusty back office, hidden behind stacks of primary documents ... you know who I mean; the one who when asked for the most obscure of sources, thinks for a few minutes and says, "Ah yes! When I worked on the Hottentot Collection back in 1920, there was a letter from ....
You get the idea. Trade offs ... at least once we've automated the collective knowledge of mankind, we'll not realize what it was that we left behind.
Sort of like that tree falling in the forest, or the sound of one hand clapping.
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