Re: Library cooperation ( was : WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative )

There were a string of articles in the Library Quarterly about philosophy in LIS a few years ago.  This is one of them, and it refers to 2 or 3 others if I recall:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/40039699

There was a response to this article to:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/40039736

A place to start at least!

Regards, 

Nathan Rinne
Media Cataloging Technician
Educational Service Center
11200 93rd Avenue North
Maple Grove MN. 55369
Email: rinnen_at_district279.org
 

 
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Bernhard Eversberg
Sent: Monday, April 12, 2010 10:28 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Library cooperation ( was : [NGC4LIB] WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative )

Alexander Johannesen wrote:
> 
> Here's an outragous idea ;
> http://shelter.nu/blog/2010/04/do-libraries-understand-future-or-how.html
> 
What exactly is outrageous about it? I gather it is this:
"Library philosophy needs to happen"

And I agree. It is outrageous that nothing much of it is happening.
OTOH, you can very well be doing philosophy without explicitly saying
so, much as Molière's Bougeois gentilhomme is amazed when he learns
he's been talking prose all his life. Whether it was good prose, was
the question of course.

Back in the 1930s there was a thread of theory that saw libraries as an
agent in the economy of thought. ("Oekonomie der geistigen Arbeit",
in German, and "geistige Arbeit" encompasses all things requiring a good
deal of thought.) This does not directly refer to books and paper, and I
think it remains valid to this very day. For much too long, we could do
little more than manage our physical collections and provide access to
the recorded knowledge buried therein through catalogs and
bibliographies. Much or most of this has meanwhile become vastly
inadequate as a device for the economy of thought.
We have, however, gone beyond minding physical collections. Always,
agws, within the limits of our resources which are somewhat below
what the global players have at their disposal. But in Germany, all
German prints up until 1900 are well under way toward being
comprehensively digitized. This can and will become a component in
the economy of thought, integrated with many other projects the
world over. But of course libraries, if they can find a future for
themselves, will never again play one of the very big parts.
Nevertheless, the need for dealing with physical collections will
not soon wither away completely, and thus catalogs remain a necessity
although we need to ask what exactly they will be necessary for,
to be of use in the contemporary economy of thought. Which seems finally
to be on its way as becoming a part of a global economy of goods and
services.

B.Eversberg