James Weinheimer said: I agree with much of this, except for "My point is that the catalog
presents information that is useful to all patrons." As I tried to
demonstrate, a lot of patrons don't find much of the information in a
catalog useful.
I interpreted the clause "information that is useful to all patrons" to mean "all of the discrete bits information that may be useful to any of the various categories of patrons" .... in other words, A,B,C,D,E,F, and G may be useful to THIS group of patrons, while THAT group finds A,B, and F useful (and couldn't care less about B), while this OTHER group finds A,B,D,F,L,M, and W useful (and finds C,D,E and G to be superfluous) and so forth. But the catalog doesn't customize records for the different categories of users. It tries to cram everything into a single generalized record that any significant user category might want. (English language grammatical construction/syntax has trouble conveying this succinctly).
Of course, all of this has to be read with the term "within reason" as understood. Creators of catalog records, no matter who or what they may be cannot possibly do everything for everybody. At some point you have to accept that while the catalog/discovery tool (whatever form it takes) can be reasonably expected to lead the horse to potable water, it's not reasonable to expect it to conduct a detailed chemical analysis or a comparative taste test of it, or to survey the surrounding hills for predators, or actually to drink the water.
We do our best to enable people to find and identify things that may be useful in their quest for knowledge, entertainment, or enlightenment, but we aren't responsible for conveying the knowledge, entertainment, or enlightenment itself.
As I write this, I can hear the voice of Ben Tucker (Principal Descriptive Cataloger at the Library of Congress when I worked there) in my mind, saying in his gentle Carolina accent ... "The catalog is not an encyclopedia, and it is not a dictionary. It's a catalog." It can lead you to the encyclopedia or the dictionary (or biographies, films, works of fantasy, maps, etc.), where you may find the answers to your questions, but it's not there to answer those all of life's questions itself.
It's not an oracle.
Janet Swan Hill, Professor
University of Colorado Libraries, CB184
Boulder, CO 80309
janet.hill_at_colorado.edu
*Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way
through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion
that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your
knowledge.*
- - Isaac Asimov
Received on Thu Aug 11 2011 - 11:56:08 EDT