[WEB4LIB] RE: Seeing ourselves as others see us

[Wilson,Alane]

Karen has such a way with words... "last-gen, hoity-toity word pudding".
I love that! But seriously, I also agree with her comments. I too read
the article and my over-all thought was that the Abbot of Cluny might
have written such a "word pudding" on hearing that an upstart printer
named Johannes Gutenberg was tinkering with things he had no place
tinkering with. 

And if you haven't read this Shirkey piece it makes a very wry
counterbalance to the Gorman piece. 

[excerpt] "The Internet is the most important thing for scholarship
since the
printing press, and all information which can be online should be
online, because that is the most efficient way to distribute material
to the widest possible audience. Billington should probably be asked
to resign, based on his contempt for U.S. citizens who don't happen to
live within walking distance of his library."

http://www.shirky.com/writings/loc_book.html 

He has done some consulting to the Library of Congress so knows of what
he writes.

Alane Wilson, MLIS
Senior Library Market Consultant
Marketing and Library Services
OCLC
800-848-5878 x4386


-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of K.G. Schneider
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2005 4:46 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: Seeing ourselves as others see us


> done in real libraries. The physical book, the hushed tones, the 
> monastic dedication, and (unspoken) the barriers to use, these are all

> essential characteristics of the academy today."
> 
> Interesting reading: http://tinyurl.com/5nazp

In fairness to Shirky's assessment, no less than the president-elect of
ALA published an editorial about Google Print in the LA Times that
struck me as bobble-headed to the nth degree. Among other comments, he
wrote:

"The nub of the matter lies in the distinction between information
(data, facts, images, quotes and brief texts that can be used out of
context) and recorded knowledge (the cumulative exposition found in
scholarly and literary texts and in popular nonfiction). When it comes
to information, a snippet from Page 142 might be useful. When it comes
to recorded knowledge, a snippet from Page 142 must be understood in the
light of pages 1 through 141, or the text was not worth writing and
publishing in the first place."

And so on and so forth. I'm not suggesting that Google Print doesn't
have its issues and anomalies, but I felt it was remarkably
short-sighted to say that Google Print wasn't "useful" because, in
essence, books are only useful if they are accessible in predetermined
dead-tree format blobs (i.e., books). Most of the editorial struck me as
last-gen, hoity-toity word pudding that pandered to the anti-technology
crowd more than it provided any meaningful critiques of Google Print.
What we needed was some lively, intelligent insights into the nexus of
libraries and Google, but this editorial simply confirmed what everyone,
such as Shirky, "knows" about libraries these days, even though major
libraries are collaborating with Google on this project. 

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at bluehighways.com