Alexander Johannesen wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 20:09, Bernhard Eversberg <ev_at_biblio.tu-bs.de> wrote:
>> This is not a response to what I was actually saying, but anyway:
>
> Huh? You said "Libraries have always been about providing free and
> liberal and uncensored access to information for
> everybody." I was responding to exactly that; in the past this was
> hard, but in the digital age this is not the hard part. The goalposts
> have moved.
My point was not that it was hard but that it was *done* by libraries
and can not likely be done by libraries, in fact might be wrested from
them, in a future digital environment.
>
>> Is it the library's job to make understanding information easy, and
>> for everybody??
>
> Well, to provide context to that question I need to point to ;
>
> noise >> data >> information >> knowledge >> wisdom
>
> Your use of a double question mark makes me assume you mean 'no.' How
> does "access to information" differ from "understanding information
> easy"? I think I know where you're heading with it, but would like a
> clarification.
>
That ?? was not deliberate, the question was meant as a question.
And the meaning was, do libraries have to do the business of
understanding anything for their readers? Rather, I think, they
have to assist in finding something readers can understand on the basis
of their knowledge. Catalogs, as we all know, can not be sufficient for
that, they can only be means for well-defined and limited ends.
Curently, and for a while, they are still needed, so how can we improve
them? is the scope of this forum for the time being. It may well have
to be renamed and expanded, or the present discussion is all off-topic.
> Our
> competence and capacity for judgement may have limits, but let's not
> think that the opposite means we shouldn't apply it or strive for more
> of it.
>
You can't seriously think I was thinking that.
>> That situation may certainly be a transitional one, and even if a lot
>> of evidence is pointing that way, predictions are still hard.
>
> Oh, I don't know. It was harder to predict 10 years ago, but these
> days ... well, it's no longer predictions of things to come as a lot
> of those things *have* come.
Sure, but a lot more will be coming about which predictions are still hard.
> The question becomes; what now? What next?
As always. C'est la vie.
B.Eversberg
Received on Tue Mar 30 2010 - 06:13:19 EDT