Will Kurt wrote:
"Not everybody has to completely understand various computational
solutions to information problems to know that they exist, what they can
do, and how they are different from what we currently do."
Okay, I'll agree to that. But you're not suggesting we have to trust you
that those systems are better than our current ones, are you? Caution is
reasonable in this area.
"For librarians to ignore much of the research in the CS world would be
the same as CS people ignoring much of the work being done in the
Electrical Engineering world."
I agree.
I don't think I can believe our failure to get people back to the moon
in almost 40 years is due simply to "attitudes." NASA has used the Space
Shuttle now for 25 years, and they've come to the realization, after
spending billions of dollars, that they can't make it safe. So they're
discontinuing it in the next couple of years. They're going back to the
60's technology for manned space travel, the capsule. This isn't a
matter of attitude, but of technological limits. We're not ready for
Star Wars yet.
Ted Gemberling
UAB Lister Hill Library
(205)934-2461
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Kurt
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 8:46 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Hot (MARC) metadata!
At 03:29 PM 8/8/2007, you wrote:
>But remember that Thomas Mann is a reference librarian,
>not a systems person. I'm not a systems person, either, so I'm not
going
>to be as conversant with systems things as others.
Just for a point of clarification I wanted to add that I am also not
a systems person either. I'm actually a research librarian for a
high-tech R&D company. I spend around 50-70% of my time purely doing
research in either engineering literature, or business/market
research. The job-site I mentioned in an earlier post is just a side
project, and I'm also a CS student in the evenings.
The failings in our metadata (and the metadata of others) are not
theoretical for me they are road blocks to my daily work. Not
everybody has to completely understand various computational
solutions to information problems to know that they exist, what they
can do, and how they are different from what we currently do. I
think Alex makes a great point about the variety of achievable
solutions that really aren't discussed or looked at all in libraries.
Computer Science is simply: "The study of computation; the discipline
that is concerned with the methods and techniques related to data
processing performed by automatic means."
It's clearly a field that directly effects what we do. Every
librarian I know, in whatever capacity deals with processing data all
the time. For librarians to ignore much of the research in the CS
world would be the same as CS people ignoring much of the work being
done in the Electrical Engineering world.
The reason we haven't gone back to the moon isn't because the
technology isn't there, but because of attitudes surrounding the
situation. The desire and ambition to go back to the moon (or beyond)
isn't there, and so we remain on the ground.
--Will
Received on Thu Aug 09 2007 - 11:09:12 EDT