[WEB4LIB] RE: Information Literacy (was Jargon...which was Usabil

[Thomas Dowling]

At 04:25 PM 5/17/2002, Drew, Bill wrote:
>I am going to play the devil's advocate here.  Why should we use jargon
>written for librarians by librarians?  The users could really care less
>about such things.  I am not talking about dumbing down.  that is a
>different issue entirely.


To the best of my knowledge, no field has developed jargon just for the 
sake of obfuscation.  Jargon is a technical vocabulary that communicates 
specific meanings within a specific field.  For any example of library 
jargon you can point to, some librarian will explain why that term is 
precise and correct, and why more general terminology fails to communicate 
some aspect of the original term.

Perhaps the question to ask is, at what points in the delivery of library 
services is it necessary for the user to understand our specific 
terminology?  And, if they haven't ever been exposed to that terminology 
before, how much effort will it be to explain it to them at that point?



Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu