NO ONE should be at such a "gathering" as observer only. To limit input is to deprive the overall endeavor of ideas. To limit input is to deprive the overall endeavor of information. Technical services people can be every bit as adventurous and imaginative as any of the other groups identified in the original description .... given the opportunity. Making blanket assumptions that they are incapable of "fresh ideas" or of embracing said ideas and expanding on them would be a mistake.
What we need is thoughts and excitement and information and experience and imagination and determination and support from all those who have a stake in the matter ..... not from "everybody except" ...
Janet Swan Hill, Professor
Associate Director for Technical Services
University of Colorado Libraries, CB184
Boulder, CO 80309
janet.hill_at_colorado.edu
*****
"For we are catalogers, and therefore the elect of God. To read is human; to catalog, divine." Charity Blackstock. Dewey Death.
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Weinheimer Jim
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 1:42 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Whiny and demanding; rude and arrogant; clueless and uninformed
Janet Hill wrote:
<snip>
You'd better include technical services folks (catalogers, metadata specialists, whatever you want to call them) in your collaborative group, since they are the ones who are most intimately acquainted with the content, various ways to manipulate it, what kinds of things it can do to display, and in some cases which things are impracticable (though possibly desirable), and which cool things might be possible (if only .....)
</snip>
At the risk of being too blunt and making myself the object of general derision, I think that at the level these people will be discussing, perhaps it would be best that if technical services people attend, they should only be there as observers, that is, to sit, watch, and listen. It seems obvious to me that what is needed now is *imagination* and this imagination should not be limited by what the technicians immediately consider to be impracticable. With the power of modern tools, which can bring in content from myriads of different sites and databases, not only from the traditional tools created by libraries, but including new cooperative tools created by non-librarians, often by true experts in the fields, e.g. musicologists, cartographers, publishers, agronomists, astronomers, physicists, and yes--even the public at large, while the importing itself can be done in a whole variety of ways--it will take a very long time of experimentation, trial and error, and so forth, t!
o reach the point where anyone could truly declare a desirable function to be "impracticable".
Far more could be done with the tools that exist on the web right now--right this second, but what we need are both an exceptionally wide vision that goes far beyond the traditional tools, and genuinely fresh ideas (which abound all over the web). Our focus should be on building the tools people want and assume that nothing is impracticable until it is proven to be so. Even in those cases when it is determined to be impracticable to implement something completely, perhaps 80% could be achieved, or a new tool could appear tomorrow that would make it all possible.
After all, when the Ferrari Formula 1 racing team is figuring out what they need to do to win races, they do not want the mechanics saying, "Well, that just can't be done." It is the mechanics' job to try their utmost to implement what the drivers and engineers determine is needed, and that means a lot of highly innovative thinking on everyone's part.
Otherwise, they do not win races and they may as well all go home.
James L. Weinheimer j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
Rome, Italy
First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Received on Tue Sep 21 2010 - 11:40:55 EDT