I've been inundated today with the question of "what is a book?" I heard a piece on the radio where the commentator asked this question. I of course started yelling at the radio: "Librarians have been asking that questions for years, stupid! ASK A LIBRARIAN!" Then once at work in the library, the ILL librarian comes up and we have a talk about connecting traditional philosophical ideas of physicality and reality with FRBR. I don't know if anyone's done this, or if we've all moved way beyond traditional philosophy and just reference our own works now with nary a thought towards the people who spend all their time asking "what is knowledge?". I'd be interested in reading something that connected the two areas of study.
And THEN, another librarian (from acquisitions this time) came in to say that she saw an exhibit by Steve Wolfe that looked like he framed book jackets, and hung paperback novels on the wall. But it turns out that he actually painted those book jackets, and the "novels" are just woodblocks made to look exactly like a book. Objects that are books to the naked eye, but have no knowledge in them.
The universe is telling me to think about this issue. I like it when convergences occur like this, but I'm having trouble even articulating what I'm grappling with today. It obviously requires a lot more thought, but I don't have time to think about these things, either (cataloging awaits me!). What is a book? Is it just information? God, am I turning into Michael Buckland??
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
A New Era of Responsibility
...A book which has come across my desk has this title. Which reminded me that I haven't posted on this blog since I was 7.5 months pregnant. Well, now our daughter is almost 15 months, I'm working a little bit again, and for the love of God, surely I can get myself back into the world of blogging about organizing information. Right?
So, in that vein, I want to write some about a project I was recently involved with. Since I am not working full time any longer, I took on a side project, archiving the personal papers of a successful businessman here in town. His dad was very famous as a businessman, as well, and some of his papers were also included in this job. The total amount was probably 20 linear feet or so.
The interesting thing about this project was how basically different it FELT than the professional archivist jobs I've had. I went to their (very large and well-appointed) home once a week, and worked out of their dining room. His wife would periodically come in, not to check on me, but to relate some historical factoid, or to show me something that she found, or to ask if she framed something correctly. Your own personal archivist! And, I found I did not have the same kind of mental freedom that I had while working in an institution. If I found something in a collection that I knew was superfluous and common, like, say, an envelope with no letter and no address, I could put it in a stack of things to get rid of. Not so with these papers, because the owner was working in his office down the hall, and he was a pack rat, and when I showed it to him, he'd say "we should keep it, I suppose."
It's interesting to be able to go to the creator and say "what is this? what were you doing at this time?" instead of just having to guess and research.
So, in that vein, I want to write some about a project I was recently involved with. Since I am not working full time any longer, I took on a side project, archiving the personal papers of a successful businessman here in town. His dad was very famous as a businessman, as well, and some of his papers were also included in this job. The total amount was probably 20 linear feet or so.
The interesting thing about this project was how basically different it FELT than the professional archivist jobs I've had. I went to their (very large and well-appointed) home once a week, and worked out of their dining room. His wife would periodically come in, not to check on me, but to relate some historical factoid, or to show me something that she found, or to ask if she framed something correctly. Your own personal archivist! And, I found I did not have the same kind of mental freedom that I had while working in an institution. If I found something in a collection that I knew was superfluous and common, like, say, an envelope with no letter and no address, I could put it in a stack of things to get rid of. Not so with these papers, because the owner was working in his office down the hall, and he was a pack rat, and when I showed it to him, he'd say "we should keep it, I suppose."
It's interesting to be able to go to the creator and say "what is this? what were you doing at this time?" instead of just having to guess and research.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Bookstores and libraries
As anyone on Autocat knows, there's been a bunch of posting lately on the difference between bookstores and libraries, and how they organize things. I don't post on autocat much (that's what blogs are for!), so here's what I think:
Anyone who says that bookstores do as good a job as libraries of organizing information is clearly insane. I mean, CLEARLY. A comment was made that the reason we catalog is to a) list everything we have in the stacks and b) find what we're after in those stacks.
And here's the rub. Bookstores only help you find the books you already know you need. As in, I need a copy of Jane Eyre. It's in the Fiction section, under Bronte. Congratulations, now pay us $10.
Now, if I were to say instead "I need a piece of English literature, written in the early-to-mid 19th century, and focusing on romantic love," the bookstore will not help you. The bookstore will look at you blankly and say "literature? Aisle 2."
The comment that was made about "finding what we're after in the stacks" is all well and good, but it presupposes that you already know exactly what you're looking for. Libraries and library catalogs are not built on the presupposition that you know what you want. They're built on the idea that you *kind of* know what you want. If you know exactly what you want, great! That's so much easier. If you don't know, exactly, we have people and catalogs that give you lots of information on subjects so maybe you can find what you need in a relatively short amount of time.
So the whole debate on bookstores and libraries is a bit silly, because they don't serve the same purposes at all, and to say that bookstores perform the same organizational tasks as libraries is ludicrous, and patently untrue.
Anyone who says that bookstores do as good a job as libraries of organizing information is clearly insane. I mean, CLEARLY. A comment was made that the reason we catalog is to a) list everything we have in the stacks and b) find what we're after in those stacks.
And here's the rub. Bookstores only help you find the books you already know you need. As in, I need a copy of Jane Eyre. It's in the Fiction section, under Bronte. Congratulations, now pay us $10.
Now, if I were to say instead "I need a piece of English literature, written in the early-to-mid 19th century, and focusing on romantic love," the bookstore will not help you. The bookstore will look at you blankly and say "literature? Aisle 2."
The comment that was made about "finding what we're after in the stacks" is all well and good, but it presupposes that you already know exactly what you're looking for. Libraries and library catalogs are not built on the presupposition that you know what you want. They're built on the idea that you *kind of* know what you want. If you know exactly what you want, great! That's so much easier. If you don't know, exactly, we have people and catalogs that give you lots of information on subjects so maybe you can find what you need in a relatively short amount of time.
So the whole debate on bookstores and libraries is a bit silly, because they don't serve the same purposes at all, and to say that bookstores perform the same organizational tasks as libraries is ludicrous, and patently untrue.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Broken Record
I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but we had "Symphony" training yesterday. This basically involved just transferring our preferences from Unicorn to Symphony. Everything else is about the same. BUT, I learned that Web Reporter, which previously was just for the Cool Kids who used Horizon, is now available for Symphony (Unicorn), too. Other than that, I didn't see a lot of Horizon in the key enhancements.
We were asked to play with Symphony, pretending to do our jobs as if we were using Unicorn Java Workflows. So I did. Was there anything at all that was different? Nope. All steps, prompts, and menus were pretty much the same. I believe it will even still ask me if the "diskette is ready" when I go to import something.
We were asked to play with Symphony, pretending to do our jobs as if we were using Unicorn Java Workflows. So I did. Was there anything at all that was different? Nope. All steps, prompts, and menus were pretty much the same. I believe it will even still ask me if the "diskette is ready" when I go to import something.
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