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

[Karen G. Schneider]

:To the best of my knowledge, no field has developed jargon just for the
:sake of obfuscation.  Jargon is a technical vocabulary that
communicates

Well, actually, Andrew Abbott (The System of Professions) would
disagree; industry-specific jargon is a regulator that helps establish
boundaries the claim of authority for professions.  

: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.

Yes, that's endemic to our profession... I've sat next to that person in
many a meeting.  However, in many cases the user doesn't need to know
most of the "aspects."  (We inadvertently began displaying an "aspect"
in lii.org, the relevance rank score, and it's going to go away without
fanfare very soon.  "stuff rises to the top," nuff said.  No tomato
aspect required.)

: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?

If you look at a lot of what we do, from the users' end, it can been
given a good gloss. Here's a book. Here's a Web site.  Here's a book
from somewhere else.  Ask a question.  Computer classes. Fast facts.
You aren't just dealing with computer literacy; in many cases you're
coping with language literacy, as well.

For the very new concept or the really arcane service that needs better
translation, maybe the teachable Web page is a good idea.  

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Karen G. Schneider kgs at lii.org  http://lii.org 
Coordinator, Librarians' Index to the Internet
lii.org  New This Week:     http://lii.org/ntw 
      lii.org: Information You Can Trust!
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