"Libraries", "Information Science" and "This Book is Overdue!"

“Libraries” by Pawley

This article is a very good beginning article on the types of libraries, librarians and the modern (as of 2001) library. It very succinctly summarizes national, public, special, academic and school libraries as well as librarianship.

The author does make the statement that digital libraries threaten the traditional library. I don’t agree with this statement. As digital media becomes more and more common, I think the digital aspects of libraries will keep libraries current, user friendly, and essentially save the “traditional” library, not threaten it.

The author also comments “…while conversion to digital format can solve libraries’ twin problems of space and conservation, it raises new issues, especially the rapid obsolescence of hardware need to “read” the digital materials.” I am interested to learn what has happened between 2001, and the present to address this problem.

“Information Science” by Saracevic

This article discusses, in depth, the definition of information science, and where the field currently stands.  First of all, I found this article a little difficult to read, it was a bit philosophical for me.  For example, when the author answers the question “What is “information” in Information Science” with the answer “We don’t know.”  Farther into the article it seemed to become a little more factual and a little less philosophical.

Something that really caught my attention was in the “proprietary IR” section. The author seems to think that proprietary IR programs are not beneficial to the science. The author says that those particular programs did not communicate their “intellectual advances with the rest”. And “The flow of knowledge, if any, is one sided, from IR research results into proprietary engines. The reverse contribution to public knowledge is zero.” In the sense that the actual programming is proprietary and is not shared, the author is correct. However, I would argue that the “contribution to public knowledge is zero” is not true. Any IR program that is easy to use, and provides good results is helpful to the general public.  While Google might not be the preferred search engine for a lot of things, I think it is a great place for the general public to begin a search on most any topic.  

“This Book is Overdue!” by Johnson

This book was a very upbeat overview of the modern field of librarianship.  I think this book was a great first reading assignment. It wasn’t very technical, and it was very positive.

One area I found to be particularly interesting was how much librarians rely on computer scientists, and their software. I don’t think this position is unique to librarianship. I had the same problems with the software that I used in a biochemistry lab. Software is needed to run the hardware, different software is needed to interpret the data, and still more software is needed to store the data. All this software (and hardware) needs a full-time IT staff to trouble shoot problems and keep everything up to date.  Without that IT staff, most work would come to a halt.