Re: Elitism - and Aristotle again! - in libraries (was Elitism in libraries)

From: Casey Durfee <Casey.Durfee_at_nyob>
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2007 11:49:09 -0700
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
The BiblioCommons prototype has something like this.  They talked a little bit about it in their presentation at code4lib 2007: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6438660403122844289&q=bibliocommons&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 
 

>>> "Rinne, Nathan (ESC)" RinneN_at_DISTRICT279.ORG> 8/2/2007 6:35 AM >> ( mailto:RinneN_at_DISTRICT279.ORG> )
...

Karen:

"My measure of a librarian's value would be in how much she or he
facilitated the creation of knowledge, not how much organization s/he
imposed on documents. In this highly networked world, facilitating
knowledge may take the form of allowing users interested in a topic to
find each other, or allowing users to show *their* view to others.
Basically helping build the conversation around the resources. And this
is the thing that I don't see us doing today."

Karen - I think it would be awesome for us to be able to do this!  A la
Library Thing.  Maybe Tim has the wherewithal - or we can help him - get
into specialized libraries and academic libraries (Go Tim).  You know, I
*want* to be able to do this - to be a facilitator at the center of it
all (I think many libs have always wanted to do this) - but meanwhile I
don't think it is a good idea for us to give up what I believe is the
historic core of our profession - which is "organization... imposed on
documents" for the sake of findability (niche, niche, niche) - and not
just because the market sees this as valuable, but because it is our
*responsibility* to do this for the common good (I am thankful that Tim
seems to do both well: http://tinyurl.com/33fovq )
Received on Thu Aug 02 2007 - 15:52:13 EDT