a few steps together

[Vivienne Cuff]

> To pick up on remarks of Nick Arnett and Gail Wanner, I think the goal is
> for librarians and techies to work together to make information products
> easy to use, with the details transparent to the user. 

My 2c worth - I think we should include in any design team graphic, 
information and user interface designers. These people also have a 
long history of dealing with information to make it easy to use 
etc.

In this day and age,  I think  librarians or technical people  don't 
have a premium on how information is managed, made accessible etc. In 
this age I really wonder what the core competency of librarians is - 
you hear people say that librarians can help people navigate through a mass 
of information etc. but that maybe because librarians created these 
systems in the first place.

Anyway Paul Saffo sums it up in a 'Wired' article - It's the context...
http://www.hotwired.com/wired/2.03/departments/idees.fortes/context.html

Is subject classification, by Dewey & LCSH,  adequate as a means of providing context?

Also, I sometimes wonder if librarians could be accused of  media 
imperialism - http://www.hotwired.com/wired/3.02/departments/electrosphere/
diller.html

I am not flaming anyone here but with what's happening on the 
Internet and the Web,  in particular, it makes me really think again 
about what a librarian is and their role - and this a question 
I haven't come to any conclusion on!

BTW - I started my library career as a cataloguer!

Cheers

Vivienne

Vivienne Cuff
World Wide Web
National Library of New Zealand
Molesworth Street (or PO Box 1467)
Wellington
Phone: 4743086 Int'l prefix: 644
EMAIL: Vivienne.Cuff at natlib.govt.nz
WWW: http://www.natlib.govt.nz/
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These are my views, and they do not 
necessarily reflect National Library
of New Zealand policy.