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

[Kevil, L H.]

Bill,

You are on the side of the angels on this issue and are not playing devil's advocate. Ignoring the distinction between jargon and technical vocabulary, I would think that if a library is to be truly user-oriented, this would extend to the language we use to communicate with the public. (The marketing dept is careful to control how the engineering dept communicates with the public - and no one accuses the engineers of deliberate obfuscation.) The library profession is in the midst of creating new technology to serve our users and to that extent rethinking our role in the information chain. It would be a pity if we passed on the opportunity to create new terminology that users can understand readily. 

My humble tuppence ha'penny.

L. Hunter Kevil
Collection Development Librarian
176 Elmer Ellis Library
University of Missouri-Columbia
Columbia, MO 65201

KevilL at missouri.edu
573-884-8760 voice
573-882-6034 facsimile

-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Dowling [mailto:tdowling at ohiolink.edu]
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 3:50 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: Information Literacy (was Jargon...which was


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