[WEB4LIB] From what point of view is a library chaotic?

[Miriam Bobkoff]

...from the point of view of any library users who expect all the books on
whatever _they_ feel their topic is, to be shelved together; but instead
find the ones they want to look at strewn all over the building. All the
books about France (language? literature? travel? history? biography?); all
the books about New Age stuff (health? religion? feminism? social history?);
all the books about horses (racing? husbandry?), addiction (psychology?
social issues? health? child-rearing?), Mark Twain (by or about? fiction or
non?)...

"Alas," we may say, "they're not all going to be in exactly the same place,
let's go look it up in the catalog and figure out what we're after." But
it's too late; the elevator of their estimation of us has just dropped
several floors.

Miriam Bobkoff                        mbobkoff at ci.santa-fe.nm.us
Santa Fe Public Library
145 Washington Avenue
Santa Fe, NM 87501
(505) 984-6832     The Library's Page  http://www.ci.santa-fe.nm.us/sfpl/

-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Arnett <listbot at mccmedia.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Date: Wednesday, September 02, 1998 6:57 PM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] From what point of view is a library chaotic?


>I hope this question isn't too off-the-wall for Web4Lib, but I'm hoping I
>can ask it in a way that is at least interesting.  I'm working with the
>notion that "organization" is a relative term. That is, one person's order
>is another's chaos. The question that emerges is the one in the subject of
>this message: From what point of view is a library chaotic?