On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 19:46, Thomale, J <j.thomale_at_ttu.edu> wrote:
> Nina's point, I think, is that we can get a clue about what the
> library/catalog *might* "need to be" from the workflows that
> users have already adopted to take advantage of widely
> available non-library information discovery tools that are better
> at retrieving information from large corpuses than what libraries
> can offer.
Not sure I said anything to the contrary of what you're saying,
although I didn't quite read her that way. Nevertheless, there's a
balance here between the need of users and what you want to give
them, and going fully one way or the other is the *wrong* answer, so
this must be approached carefully.
> Perhaps now we are wasting resources trying to compete
> where we can't compete.
Couldn't have said it better myself. All I see these days are the
library world catching up to what to others are old stuff. Where is
that brilliant librarian philosophy and thinking present in your
systems? (I suspect a lot of you have forgotten what this is all
about; serendipity, knowledge systems, education, information in
context and so forth)
> (Or is the whole assumption about "most users'" workflows misleading/incorrect?)
Well, dangerous and misleading at the very least. :) The biggest
problem here is that the current users of the library is "everybody",
and any attempt to track down "who they are" will end up in
stereotypes that probably won't be too far from what you're already
working towards, and possibly dead wrong if you want to look to the
future.
> Maybe in this case what *is* trumps what we might believe *should be.*
Well, if you think that whatever *is* is the answer (or should be
allowed to "trump" anything), are you saying things are dandy?
Regards,
Alex
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Received on Fri Feb 13 2009 - 16:35:14 EST