Jim,
I don't often question the motivations of the people who submit the
questions to the IPL, and I really don't think that sending in what we'd
call ready reference questions makes them helpless or lazy; they just have
questions, and I often have answers. It's mutually beneficial, and I rather
enjoy the work. They learn something, and I learn something. Their reasons
are their own, and I only ask about them when it makes sense in order to
better answer the question.
I recently claimed a seemingly simple ready reference question for which
Google was initially no help. But it should have right? But maybe the reason
I did not find the answer on Google or Yahoo was because I was helpless or
lazy. How do you work this Internet Google thing? Google did come in handy
later but only after I had done most of the legwork with (gasp!) print
sources. Even the wretched catalog helped out here and there. Imagine that.
I know. I know. I don't count because I have been in the game long enough to
know how to use a catalog to meet my needs.
But if you and Alex are right, and if we all don't get it right, then I need
to be looking for a new line of work soon. Curses! I am not even middle aged
yet. That time machine dropped me right at the moment that cataloging was
about go extinct.
Maybe the NGC will never come about and cataloging will die off. If that
happens, then for those who are interested, meet me at the end of the
railroad tracks. We'll memorize some of the great works and then burn them.
You bring the rants from NGC4LIB. I bring them from AUTOCAT.
Sorry to go all off-topic on you, but I could not help it.
Bryan
>
>Yes, and I still have to get papers from JSTOR because some of my users
never have gotten the hang of it. And these aren't just the old faculty, but
undergraduates as well. We will always have people who are more or less
helpless in the information environment, and whether they are helpless
because they really are helpless and cannot learn, or whether it is because
they are too lazy to do it themselves, I don't know.
>
>I don't think it's wise to base ourselves on the most helpless of our users
however. Of course, we need to continue to help them, but we should focus
our efforts toward making them less dependent on us, and on other
"information providers" who may not follow anything like our code of ethics.
>
Received on Mon May 04 2009 - 14:39:37 EDT