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

[Sara Tompson]

Hi:

Here is my 2 cents worth.  I think materials on shelves in libraries
are always teetering on the edge of total entropy.  It is so easy for
items to get misshelved; even if one has staff doing shelf-reading
DAILY, materials will still get out of order, because slick covered
floppy books can slip into the middle of a shelving range, book ends
can slide, etc.
It is MUCH easier to keep metadata, AKA an online catalog, organized
than physical materials!
The latter tends toward chaos.  I think we need to fight this entropic
move, so our users can indeed physically browse a collection
successfully.  However, we are never going to totally win this fight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sara Tompson, M.S.
Library Administrator
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
PO Box 500, MS 109
Batavia, IL 60510 USA
630/840-6014    sarat at fnal.gov
http://www-lib.fnal.gov/library/sara.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Arnett <listbot at mccmedia.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Date: Wednesday, September 02, 1998 7:57 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?  A
similar,
>perhaps easier, question would be, "For which potential clientele is
the
>library least well organized?"
>
>I hope I'm not assuming too much when I suggest that libraries *are*
>chaotic to some people.
>
>This is for the book I'm working on.  I'm not sure if I mentioned in
my
>last question, but the latest working title for it is, "Metanoia: The
>Co-evolution of Technology and Thought."
>
>Nick
>