Jim Weinheimer said:
"This is the climate why I believe librarians must sit down and deeply
reconsider what it is that they are *really* doing, doing something the
horse-and-buggy folks did *not* do when automobiles were introduced. Those
people thought they were in the horse-and-buggy business, but it turned out
they were not. They were in the transportation business, but they
couldn't--or wouldn't--see that at the time and everything passed them by."
A lot of people use this analogy, but it isn't quite accurate. A lot of the early automobile manufacturers were carriage and wagon makers. They could see the writing on the wall, but most of them couldn't compete with emerging large scale operations like Ford. They knew they were in the transportation business, and knew motor vehicles were the future. Their operations just couldn't scale up.
Here are a few of the more obvious examples that come to mind:
* The Studebakers started out building covered wagons in the 1850s. Their product line evolved as markets changed, and they started producing autos in the early 1900s. The last Studebaker rolled off the assembly line in 1966. Sure, the company failed, but it didn't have anything to do with with them thinking they were in the horse-and-buggy business.
* International Harvester started out making horse drawn farm equipment in the 1800s and still manufactures trucks and school buses today.
* And the Fisher Body Company was started by carriage makers. Fisher Body made auto bodies for GM until the company was absorbed by GM in 1984.
Bernie Sloan
--- On Wed, 9/9/09, James Weinheimer <j.weinheimer_at_AUR.EDU> wrote:
> From: James Weinheimer <j.weinheimer_at_AUR.EDU>
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] An article to warm the hearts of cataloguers
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Date: Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 3:15 AM
> On Tue, 8 Sep 2009 16:43:46 -0400,
> Tim Spalding <tim_at_LIBRARYTHING.COM>
> wrote:
>
> >Libraries had a chance with the web, but bad
> technology, bad thinking
> >and discouragement from OCLC and others stymied
> engagement, and more
> >than a decade we almost NEVER get a library in a search
> result.
> >Libraries had a chance with the open data, social
> networking and
> >mashups, and they dropped the ball. No top 1,000
> website uses library
> >data, except Google Books (sort of), and even in social
> cataloging, of
> >the five sites, only one (LT) uses library data�and
> that's been a
> >constant struggle.
> >
> >Now we're moving past the web and metadata into the
> stuff itself�and
> >the Kindle may well be the coup de grace.
> >
> >Sorry to be a pessimist.
>
> I can imagine that I would agree completely *if* I were not
> a librarian, so
> I fully confess that I have a personal stake in this
> discussion. It's tough
> when others consider that you and your career should be
> consigned to the
> waste-basket of history, and it's even worse when you
> secretly think it may
> be true, yourself.
>
> Of course, I do not want us to go silently into that great
> goodnight, and
> from the larger point of view, I don't think that
> librarians should
> disappear. When I work with people, it turns out that they
> don't have the
> slightest idea how to go about finding useful information
> on the web, other
> than typing words into a Google box and watching what does
> and does not pop
> up. It's all a complete mystery to them; they don't
> understand how Google
> works any better than how the library catalog works. It's
> all rather like
> people watching a magician onstage, producing rabbits,
> cards and flowers out
> of their coat sleeves, hats, and from behind someone's
> ear!
>
> But libraries are threatened as they perhaps, have never
> been before. They
> demand a lot of money, which has been short for a long time
> and getting
> shorter as we speak, while libraries often have some of the
> most attractive
> spaces and buildings on a campus or in a community--space
> that others would
> prefer to have for themselves.
>
> This is the climate why I believe librarians must sit down
> and deeply
> reconsider what it is that they are *really* doing, doing
> something the
> horse-and-buggy folks did *not* do when automobiles were
> introduced. Those
> people thought they were in the horse-and-buggy business,
> but it turned out
> they were not. They were in the transportation business,
> but they
> couldn't--or wouldn't--see that at the time and everything
> passed them by. I
> think journalists are in the same dilemma today. They must
> reconsider what
> they are *really* doing, and it is not writing for a
> newspaper on a topic
> assigned by an editor to get some filler for the local
> section. I don't know
> what they are really doing, but that is their problem, not
> mine.
>
> I have spent some time at this, and I think that the
> business that libraries
> are really in is *not* maintaining and organizing
> collections; it's not
> selection, acquisition, description, organization,
> circulation, reference,
> preservation. I think the business that libraries are
> really in is:
> facilitating scholarly communication. But I use the term
> "scholarly
> communication" in a different way than what is commonly
> understood, but I
> can't find better term(s). In the sense that I am using the
> terms, a
> "scholar" is not just some dude with a PhD. It means anyone
> who is fairly
> serious and who wants to learn something. This can mean a
> 4-year old child
> to an emeritus professor. So, the emphasis is on helping
> people to learn,
> not so much for sheer entertainment, although they can
> certainly use our
> tools as well.
>
> I also see "Communication" differently: not just simply
> emails or hyperlinks
> between people and text, but communication that goes beyond
> time and space.
> In this sense, someone from today can "communicate" with
> Plutarch or
> Confucius, although it is rather one-way communication, but
> an 18th century
> scholar on Plutarch can also be included in this
> communication, as well as
> those today.
>
> So, once this idea of "scholarly communication" is seen,
> our task is to
> "help" in all kinds of ways. That's what libraries and
> librarians have
> always done. We *help* in determining useful vs. non-useful
> information,
> reliable sources, providing reliable search results, and so
> on. In the past,
> we controlled a lot of this process because of the
> intricacies of the book
> market and through our cataloging rules, but the new
> information environment
> means that a lot of the controls we have always enjoyed in
> selection,
> acquisition, description and so on have already
> disappeared. We must accept
> that--in some cases, gratefully!--and move on.
>
> There's still a place for librarians, their skills and I
> think perhaps most
> important is their ethical stance. But we've got to carve
> it out somehow.
>
> Jim Weinheimer
>
Received on Thu Sep 10 2009 - 17:20:52 EDT