Re: If Academic Libraries Remove Computers, Will Anyone Come?

Thanks very much for your comment.

One can of course always up the stakes, so to 
speak.

But even so, this hasn't deterred LIS persons, and 
various other types, from constructing all kinds of 
further castles in the air around slogans such as, 
sure, "knowledge management", "knowledge 
organization" and so on. How long will it take 
before they move along to "wisdom organization", 
"meaning management", "revelation systems and 
services", "inspiration organization",  or who 
knows what else ?

Not that I want to get into word disputes, but I 
do believe that even information requires context 
( within a given person's cognitive constellation, 
or sometimes within that person's affective make-
up ) in order to qualify as information ( for any 
given person ). Any specific element contained in 
any material among the materials organized by a 
library can result in differing sorts of information 
for different recipients.

It seems to me that organizing sources of 
( potential ) information, and surrogates for 
those sources, is in itself an important enough 
and demanding enough task. Why don't we 
just call it what it is ?  Semantic inflation or 
obfuscation is not really required, or helpful.

At least in my opinion.


 - Laval Hunsucker
   Breukelen, Nederland




----- Original Message ----
From: "Mitchell, Michael" <Michael.Mitchell_at_BRAZOSPORT.EDU>
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Sent: Mon, May 3, 2010 2:56:14 PM
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] If Academic Libraries Remove Computers, Will Anyone Come?

I'd substitute the word "knowledge" for your use of "information" and then agree with most of what you are saying. Knowledge includes a context for information.

Michael Mitchell
Technical Services Librarian
Brazosport College
Lake Jackson, TX
michael.mitchell at brazosport.edu