Laval Hunsucker wrote in part:
"I'd say, myself, that nobody's gonna get anywhere worth getting, until we finally abandon the absurd myth that librarians organize information. ( As opposed to -- kind of -- organizing ( surrogates of, references to, metadata for, . . . ) documents containing collections of statements and the like that have the potential to lead to the construction of information when absorbed and cognitively processed by individual human minds. )"
I like this distinction. I think it is clarifying and places the activity of knowledge and information creation, or just plain understanding, in the proper locale - - between the ears of our patrons.
She also wrote: "The hypostasization of information is what got us into the ugly and hopeless situation in which we find ourselves," which I mostly agree with, but I view the situation a bit more optimistically. [ I looked up the term hypostatization: "to treat or regard (a concept, idea, etc.) as a distinct substance or reality"; nice.]
I also liked the equivocation: we sort of organize surrogates of information (documentation in various formats), because the inconsistency in what we do for bibliographic record creation must be acknowledged. Lessening that inconsistency is part of the battle to provide better catalogs, the interface being a problematic area as well. But as I wrote, I'm optimistic about our potential in both areas.
Daniel
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Daniel CannCasciato
Head of Cataloging
Central Washington University Brooks Library
400 E. University Way
Ellensburg, WA 98926-7548
dcc_at_cwu.edu
Received on Sat May 01 2010 - 12:11:35 EDT