Thanks for the links and further thoughts, Jim.
I couldn't agree with you more about the usefulness of context during
the discovery process.
Same on the handing of your globalization books. Maybe we can say that
the role of librarians is for them to encourage patrons to be their
own truth-seekers, just so the users have the facts to be intelligent
about it.
> Public librarians would have much more experience than academic librarians.
Definitely on appropriateness matters, given the wider range of people
publibs serve.
And yet I fear that for reasons unrelated to actual merit--for
example, the close ties between elite universities and the social and
finanical elites--the publibs may lose out in a joint system.
Interestingly, speaking of the just-given example of globalization
books, this is one fear I have about a common academic-publib system.
Elite academics tend to love the cosmopolitan approach. Typical publib
users want what is most immediately relevant to them--hence, my
appreciation of Nate's interest in featuring local context.
The solution could be to make it easy for publibs to localize the
national publib collection, while also providing ways for patrons to
go elsewhere if they prefer, so no one feels restricted. In fact, this
is why I think patrons should be able to access both public and
scholarly systems directly.
All I know is that publibs should be careful: look at the fuss over
shedding MLS librarians in favor of Ph.D. subject specialists
(http://acrlog.org/2011/04/13/why-all-the-fuss-over-phd-academic-librarians/).
Would a common system significantly worsen these conflicts? Very
possibly.
I love the idea of the Net expanding content possibilities for
patrons, of delinking knowledge and geography, but if publibs lose
their distinctive identities or someday go out of business entirely,
because of a fixation on national and global content, then we'll all
be the poorer.
Detail--a little too much of a digression, but still irresistible: I
dropped by the Golden Notebook and found the interface to be wanting;
in fact, rather primitive. I'd like it to be extra-easy to drill right
down to the sentence level, with comments displayed as the cursor
passed over the relevant words. I'd prefer a comments interface built
on the dictionary-highlights-and-notes system now used in the Kindle
app on the iPad and perhaps elsewhere. Something with a "select"
feature more precise than paragraphs. For now, the Kindle does show
the most commented-on passages but doesn't break them into individual
comments. Needless to say, both internal and external social
networking features could be baked in. Do you or anyone else know of
an interface similar to what I've proposed for both detailed viewing
of comments and response to them? It might very well exist already! Or
maybe Amazon has it coming.
David Rothman
Co-Founder, LibraryCity.org
@librarycity
703.370.6540
Looking for contributing writers--especially librarians
On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 1:27 PM, James Weinheimer
<weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> David Rothman wrote:
> <snip>
> Jim, thanks for your reflections, and here's something of interest. Nate
> Hill of the San Jose Library and the PLA blog wrote of the three
> Cs--collections, conversations and context--as functions of libraries. I
> like that mix.
> </snip>
>
> Collections, Conversations and Context. I like that too: simple, clear and
> with a punch. Maybe that could be our new "Tune in, Turn on, Drop out" (!)
>
> Currently, the systems have been trying to provide some of this, but nothing
> I have seen is really successful yet. One of the best I have seen so far is
> Doris Lessing's "The Golden Notebook" that allows experts, and others, to
> comment on each page. http://thegoldennotebook.org/book/p1/ This is nice,
> but somehow, something seems to be lacking to me.
>
> Concerning the Protocols, it is important to understand how the library
> supplied context in the old days. It worked in an ingenious way. In the old
> card catalog, you would open the correct drawer, browse, find the heading
> and flip through the groups of cards as you see in these searches in the LC
> catalog: (title) *http://tinyurl.com/3gcggnw* and if you knew enough,
> subject search *http://tinyurl.com/3vb37al*.
>
> Just browsing the cards gives the searcher a context for the item--you see
> pretty quickly that there is some kind of controversy. Then, when browsing
> the shelves, you see a lot more. The thing is, people today very rarely
> browse catalog records like they browsed catalog cards and a lot of this is
> lost. Also, browsing the shelves is lost too. While there are advantages to
> keyword, there are serious problems as well, since the catalog was designed
> to function best in the other environment, and a lot has been lost in the
> transfer onto the web.
>
> On the web with keyword access, you can wind up right in the middle of the
> item:
> http://www.archive.org/stream/TheJewishPerilTheProtocolsOfTheLearnedEldersOfZion/JP#page/n6/mode/1up
> and who knows what someone will think?
>
> In a relevant case, I worked in a collection that had quite a number of
> books on globalization, but all were anti-globalization. My own political
> opinion is also anti-globalization, but since I am a librarian, my personal
> views are irrelevant, so I wound up buying a number of books that provided a
> much more positive view of globalization even though I personally disagreed.
>
> Concerning appropriate texts, I hadn't thought about it in this way before,
> but the problem you mention of appropriate texts may be fairly new (or maybe
> not!). While the concern of appropriateness was always there for librarians,
> it was more circumscribed in the sense that a specific institution had more
> circumscribed patrons, high school or middle school, research scholars or
> undergraduates perhaps, but now it's potentially *everybody* (pre-school to
> senior researchers) using the same system (as they do with Google). Public
> librarians would have much more experience than academic librarians. It's
> amazing that the systems work as well as they do, but there is still a lot
> more needed.
>
> --
> James L. Weinheimer weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
> First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
> Cooperative Cataloging Rules:
> http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
>
Received on Mon May 23 2011 - 15:10:58 EDT