Hola, Senor!
Me:
>> We need the library world to be mapped. Not
>> extensively, but enough for us to define, model
>> and define that world, and we need to do that
>> for ourselves but also for those who wishes to
>> cooperate with us.
Laval Hunsucker <amoinsde_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
> Here I couldn't agree with you less. That's the last thing
> we need, for "a serious attempt by all to actually save
> the library world from being forgotten by the future",
> or for anything else, or for any other reason I can imagine
> -- except maybe for a nice exhibit in some museum later
> on showing people how there once was this funny thing
> everybody used to call a "library" and look, this is more
> or less how it worked. Otherwise, "modelling the library
> world" seems a pretty useless exercise.
Wow. You obviously have no idea of how this thing called
"communication" works, do you? Now, I assume your native tongue is
Dutch? Good. Now, my native tongue is Norwegian. And under normal
circumstances we wouldn't be able to have a serious talk, as I don't
speak Dutch and no one sane speaks Norwegian. But, living in countries
with good education we both probably learned English at school. And
this is a good thing! It enables you and me - otherwise confined to
mute nodding of assumptive vagueness! - to actually talk, to transmit
meaning and models between us. It looks like we're still a bit rusty,
but at least there's words coming out of my mouth and you seem to hear
them and understand some of them. So far, so good. English is a map
between us.
The library world does not speak Norwegian, Dutch or English, but
Librarynese, with several accents and regional variants thrown in. The
rest of the world has a host of other languages. For cultures and
bodies to talk effectively and well you need to define what you're
saying in an upper layer. Even within one segment of a language you
often need to bridge semantics between the two in order to get it
right. If I say "classical music" out loud, what am I talking about?
The generic broad sweeping (but oh! so stupid notion) "anything with
violins in it" classical, or do I mean a specific time period, a
specific time period that's broader than the Classical period (like
embracing baroque), or a given style of music, or the music of some
composers, or 'classical' in the way of meaning 'safe' music in a
given period / idiom, and on and on and on. The sad truth is that
there's no such thing as "classical music", only more specific
definitions of the notion and often are highly contextual, yet it's an
expression people use often in all sorts of situations.
So why don't you get it? Do I need to go through the basics of
information science, of ontologies, definitions, key/value recursive
taxa models, and so on? Or just the basic limitations on
communication, language, syntax, structures and rules? How in order to
translate between two bodies we look for the bell-curve of semantics
between the models?
> Why should one
> bother to do *that* ? I don't get the point. Seems like an
> imbecilic sort of navel-staring.
You're being insulting on purpose, aren't you? Yeah, I know you are,
otherwise you would be - oh, what's the word? - really stupid. You
know, the "that" in your tirade above could be referring to a number
of things, but mostly the part where you just don't get it. Are you
going to attack things and call them stupid because you yourself don't
get it? That's Teabagger territory, that.
> If we should be talking about mapping or modelling or
> defining *anything*, we should be talking about
> mapping or modelling or defining the ( entire ) universe
> and ecology of document and information use --
So, in order to make something neat and small work, we need to make it
huge and unsurmountable?
> an
> ecology within which the library and the "information
> profession" used necessarily to occupy an essential place
> and to play a vital role ( though not a place and not a
> role that we as an information profession really ever well
> understood, let's not delude ourselves ).
That place is called "the world." We in the semantic web world have
know about it for a very long time, and we have defined our little
corners and nooks pretty well, and they are everywhere. We're now
waiting for consensus to sort of out the kinks, really. Oh, hang on.
There's one piece missing. Yeah, you guessed it; the library world, a
bunch of people living in isolation from "the world" thinking outside
thinking is suspicious and if you haven't made it yourself, then we
won't have a bar of it, and as a result totally missing from any
serious world modeling goings on. (Oh, get stuffed; I'm writing
sarcastically, of *course* there's exceptions ...)
> Only through
> modelling that *whole* documentary/information/
> communication ecology can we imho hope to have any
> realistic chance left of determining whether our profession
> as we more or less know it today will have a future role to
> play within that ecology -- and if so, how.
You know, the library world have already done this. It's called MARC
(with added AACR2), and it's the thing we're trying to get away from
because - surprise, surprise! - it's getting too big, too bloated, too
complex, too rigid, too crazy, too expensive to maintain and create,
too limiting, too little, too late.
Focus on what you actually know, and work hard on mapping that to what
the rest of the world is doing (and I'm here giving up on librarians
ever working directly with the rest of the world, and seriously *join*
their efforts [speaking post-DC here]). If you do anything but that,
you will fail.
> I'm not even sure it's possible to do something such as
> this, in practice.
There were a few links in this very thread showing you that it
definitely *can* be done. They just need a slightly more open model of
cooperation, and voila!
> But I'm sure that if it *is* possible to do
> it in a meaningful way, it's going to be a very very very
> demanding undertaking. I wouldn't myself put any money
> on the chances for success. We haven't in the last many
> decades shown much collective enthusiasm or competence
> to do this kind of job. Why should we think it's going to
> happen now ?
Because if you don't, there is no future?
> Of course we can on the other hand just keep waiting
> around and just see what actually happens.
Spoken like a true warrior.
Alex
--
Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
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Received on Thu Jun 24 2010 - 19:58:15 EDT