On 03/08/2013 18:19, Karen Coyle wrote:
<snip>
> On 8/3/13 8:38 AM, James Weinheimer wrote:
>> But all of that assumes that a community no longer needs the library
>> itself.
> I don't know where that comes from, but my message was the opposite.
> The community very definitely needs the library. Unless you think that
> the library is books and journals, but not learning, creating,
> communicating.
</snip>
I know what you meant, Karen. It's just that when I see something like
"The Mission of Librarians is to Improve Society through Facilitating
Knowledge Creation in Their Communities" I think: no way. I have seen
his talk too, and it's nice, but the mission of libraries is something
different and far more important. It is not through "facilitating
knowledge creation" and it never has been. It is to try to give the very
best information it possibly can to the members of its community. The
Googles don't care about that in the slightest, in spite of their
heartfelt testimonials and swearing on a stack of Bibles. I think that
the traditional task of libraries is perhaps even more important than
ever before in history, because society is facing this huge public
opinion campaign to try to get people to embrace the Googles, (and it's
succeeded!) and thereby think that traditional library tools are past it.
The fact is: nobody knows if our tools are past it. I agree that what we
have today doesn't work and *everything* needs to be updated in all
kinds of ways. No question about that. The arguments I have had with
people about that are just depressing and tiring. Our tools need a
complete overhaul. But, the traditional tools provided something that is
almost beyond people's comprehension today. When I say that, I know that
people will roll their eyes, decide that I don't know what I am talking
about and am looking nostalgically at the past. When I demonstrate how
it could work, I am reduced to showing card catalogs or even printed
catalogs! That makes me look even more like a foolish Luddite in the
eyes of everyone, and is a terrible problem when we have a library
catalog that is so badly broken as ours is.
That frightens me and it cannot be good for society. It's too soon to
give up and swallow what the corporations throw at us, I think. I would
love to see one, good, solid attempt of libraries to make something new
before they (maybe) go under and spend their time teaching people how to
update Wikipedia pages and become community events organizers.
Unfortunately, the library gurus in their wisdom have given us RDA and
FRBR! It's almost comical!
--
*James Weinheimer* weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
*First Thus* http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
*First Thus Facebook Page* https://www.facebook.com/FirstThus
*Cooperative Cataloging Rules*
http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
*Cataloging Matters Podcasts*
http://blog.jweinheimer.net/p/cataloging-matters-podcasts.html
Received on Sat Aug 03 2013 - 13:17:20 EDT