We Can Rebuild Libraries - We Have the Technology. Our SLS Reference Service subscribers to ALA Edition's approval program, so we recently received a copy of Magic & Hypersystems by Harold Billings. They let me look at it to get my opinion about keeping it for our professional collection, so I did one of my many sophisticated, complex tests - I turned to a random page and looked for something that interested me. Here's what I found:
"Despite the noise from many quarters these days, there has long been a national information infrastructure. It is called libraries. But the failure of the library profession to assert the very special and important role that its members have played in creating and maintaining this long-extant infrastructure...has helped leave them without the full stature they should command." [p.75]
There wasn't anything especially new in the excerpt I read, although I wish I had time to read the whole thing. But the phrase "national information infrastructure" made me stop for a moment. It's a message I think we need to hit home with legislators and taxpayers, especially in light of budget cuts and attempts to remove information from the public domain.
There's also a chapter called "The Bionic Library" that includes this passage:
"Electronic information is a garden ready to flower, particularly if it will move towards a new distribution, use, and payment paradigm. To some scholars, the concept of an electronic library is paradise at hand; to others it is absolutely terrifying. I suggest that libraries are evolving as bionic libraries: organic, evolutionary, and electronically enhanced." [p.37]
I like the garden analogy, especially in light of our (librarians') practice of "weeding" material in our collections. Or on the internet, which is one of the things I think the whole email spam controversy is about - the need to weed (preferably before the user sees it).
I'm not suggesting that librarians become spam filters (or electronically enhanced!), but I do hope we're stepping up to the plate to help with new paradigms and garden paths. The conferences I have been attending recently suggest to me that we are, although we're not yet at a point where users are realizing the benefits. Soon, grasshopper, soon.
Oh, and the whole garden thing is also a great analogy for the entertainment industry, don't you think? Will they let it bloom or die? [The Shifted Librarian]
I found this piece very interesting for a number of reasons.
Now. about the failure of the library profession to assert its role and importance. I think that the profession, both now and in the past, has always tried to do this, but nobody listened. I've only been a librarian for 4 years, but my mother was a librarian (yes, I'm a 2nd generation librarian). I remember some of the stuff she did with ALIA. Libraries were taken for granted. So that when something different & more exciting came along (the internet), many people thought that libraries and librarians were superfluous. It doesn't do any good to play the blame game.
"National information infrastructure" - this seems similar to what I mean when I speak of "information rights." Copyright holders have framed the current copyright debate in terms of allowing piracy/stealing of intellectual property or not. I say, no - it's not just about your rights - society and individuals also have certain information rights. This is just rephrasing a new concept - the courts used to always take into account public policy considerations their decisions. Now when copyright holders are starting to side-step the traditional limits on copyright through contract law and technology, we need to assert our own rights to information. These rights are human rights, similar to the right to education, the right to a free press, freedom of assembly, shelter, clean water etc. Copyright always used to be a balancing act between the rights of the copyright holder and the rights of the public. Information rights are just a way of restoring this balance, which has been upset of late.
Seeing that this entire blog is based on the the metaphor of the exploded library, I have to say something about this garden analogy. I like it, especially the unpredictable organic aspect. On the other hand, I think most librarians (to name a few) are used to this mantra of being prepared for constant change and fthe necessity to forsake the old and embrace the new. That said, some changes are better than others, and we should do our utmost to have our say in the growth of this garden.
8:25:20 PM 
|
|
