Role of librarians

[The Big Glee Bopper]

On Wed, 18 Oct 1995 weibel at oclc.org wrote:

> Thom writes:
> 
> > You'd find that what your friend and most people want is a dialog with
> > the author as to what they meant. With books this is impossible. With
> > the net it is very possible.
> 
> Nope... what my colleague wanted was a canonical reference to cite for
> the purpose of establishing  scholarly linkages.   Please spare Tim the
> burden of having to converse one-on-one with everyone who has an idea
> about the Web and how it should work.

Most people won't want to talk to Tim but all people _can_. email 
actually is the codi-phone of the internet. We can put it on and 
listen if it is City Bank calling at dinner to sell or some one related.

> Part of the point of citation linkages is to remove the need to find
> the person in order to get access to their ideas.  

Are you suggesting this was part of the explicit design or perhaps a 
function of the medium -- paper?

> A resource should be
> accessible irrespective of the person or place that is the custodian at
> some time or another.  

... but, if the resource is a person?? This is the new part ... remember?

> These links are much more convenient in the
> electronic world, but also more labile, and must be maintained.  

Why? If I write a paper and publish on the web and decide to change it 
tomorrow I will regardless of citation linkage for the simple reason that 
I can.

> Stay
> tuned for Uniform Resource Names, coming to a server near you soon.

McLuhan _also_ said: the content of all new medium is an old medium. You
are describing this to a T. Citation, canonical reference ... paper based
research.  Not too interesting in 1995. Isn't the more _interesting uniform 
resource name_ a social security number?? 

Tom Peters has the one about the people who thought their job in 1900 was 
to deliver ice to homes. They went out of business, but the folks who 
realized that the technology was changing and that their real job was to 
preserve food still are working. The big stretch for you on a personal 
level and OCLC on a organizational level will be to realize that the real 
content of the internet is not documents and citations but people. It's 
the ice/refrigerator thing. It's the fish/water thing. It's the thing you 
don't get even though it is in front of you even as we speak. AOL 
understands it. Compuserve understands it. MSN certainly understands it.

--Thom