On 09/10/2013 1.21, Peter Schlumpf wrote:
<snip>
At the risk of being blunt, catalogers think too much and take
themselves too seriously. That has been their problem all along. And it
is true of Libraryland generally. In doing so they make themselves ever
more irrelevant.
</snip>
You can be blunt--please be blunt. One of the problems is people are not
saying what they really think. Of course, everyone needs to be civil (as
you are) but especially in these crazy, changing times in the
information world, the only thing we can be sure of is that *nobody*
knows what the public wants and even less, what they will want in two
years from now. So, when somebody says that they know what people want,
it is BS. They don't know; they can't. If they did know, they would keep
their mouths shut and make outrageous amounts of money. That puts
everybody in the same boat, which is a real advantage.
Concerning John's comment that there should be "IMHOs" in my messages, I
appreciate the thought, but no. I have the courage of my convictions and
if somebody can demonstrate where I am wrong, please do so, and if I am
wrong I will admit it, just as I have in the past. If someone cares to
look on the web, they will find that I have changed my mind several
times. I consider that not to show failure or weakness, but instead
learning, change and adaptability.
So, to return to the point, do catalogers (and librarians) think too
much and take themselves too seriously? If we say that it is unimportant
to allow quick, reliable, consistent, unbiased access to resources that
are selected by experts, then that would have to be demonstrated. The
Googles certainly work very hard and spend outrageous amounts of money
to provide a type of quick access to materials that benefits their
organizations in various ways, but the other points (reliable,
consistent, unbiased, selected by experts) fall by the wayside.
Would the public like to have that kind of access? I think they are
screaming for it (and I have pointed to those voices in my podcasts and
papers). I don't think the Googles have any interest in providing that
kind of access for people, although they will tell you it is of vital
interest to them, and we are supposed to believe it, that Google does no
evil, that McDonald's does it all for me, that Starbucks cares about the
rain forests, that Nike shoes will make me "Just do it" and so on. I,
for one, do not believe it.
The fact is, the library catalog does allow that kind of reliable,
consistent, unbiased access to resources that are selected by experts. I
can prove it, and have done so. The problem is: the methods the public
is supposed to use for finding are definitely obsolete. If the library
community refuses to update those methods to something modern and are
aimed at the practical use of a public that refuses to sit for
hours-long tutorials, then the library world deserves whatever it gets.
--
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 Wed Oct 09 2013 - 04:04:58 EDT