News Items for _Journal of Internet Cataloging_

[Shane White]

Talk about flamebait !  Come on Tom, do you think librarians are so limited
in their imagination that all we can think about is Melville Dewey and
electronic card catalogues?  "Cataloguing the internet" can mean just about
anything that makes the information in it more accessible to the people who
are looking for it.

You are right about one thing though - the Packard-Bell issue did go on a
bit long, as well as the reaction to the various Baker articles in the New
Yorker.  We are a pretty defensive lot.

Shane

At 02:41 pm 1/11/96 -0800, Tom Tipsword wrote:
>Gerry McKiernan writes:
>
>>      As always, any and all suggestions, recommendations, or
>> candidates will be very much appreciated.
>
>My suggestion would be to scrap both the journal and the whole idea 
>of cataloging the Internet.   Even if the  concept of bibliographic 
>control of the ever changing Internet wasn't a close cousin of trying to 
>nail Jello (tm) to a tree, applying the constraints of the MARC format 
>and cataloging rules to all the infinitely varied things on the 'net 
>is so limiting it boggles the mind.
>
>When you think about how much time we spend seriously (!) discussing 
>things like cataloging the Internet, it's no wonder that librarians have
the sort 
>of image that leads to stuff like the Packard Bell commercial which has
been the 
>cause of so much wailing and gnashing of teeth lately.   Seriously, have you 
>ever heard anyone who wasn't a librarian demand that catalogers come in 
>and straighten out this messy Internet thing?
>
>Come on folks, show a little imagination.   Melville Dewey is dead.  We 
>don't have to look at this brave and beautiful new electronic world with 
>his 19th century point of view.   
>
>Time for a paradigm shift!!
>