[10436] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: Grumpy, Old, Realistic Cybrarians
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bruce Gilbert)
Mon Jul 22 20:34:21 1996
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 1996 18:44:01 -0500 (CDT)
From: Bruce Gilbert <bg7601s@acad.drake.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Path: acad.drake.edu!bg7601s
From: bg7601s@acad.drake.edu (Bruce Gilbert)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.pacs-l
Subject: Re: Grumpy Old Cybrarians
Message-ID: <1996Jul21.141523@acad.drake.edu>
Date: 21 Jul 96 14:15:23 CST
References: <9607180455.AA16996@a.cni.org>
Craig A Summerhill <craig@cni.org> writes:
> On Wed, 10 Jul 1996, Bruce Gilbert <bg7601s@acad.drake.edu> wrote:
>> Well, you wouldn't be alone in not worrying about (low-end computer users)
>> Clearly, people like Bob Gates and Marc Andreesen(sp?) could
>> care less.
> For some reason, Bruce, I have this gnawing feeling that you're not
> really in a position to speak to the personal motivations of either
> of these individuals.
I'm not speaking to their motivations; I'm judging them by their
(or, more precisely, their organizations') actions. If your organization
acts as if it don't care about the community of computer users (as
MS did when it implemented a second GUI (Windoze 95) which was
not compatible (e.g., NT apps won't necessarily work on 95 machines,
and vice-versa) with its existing high-end GUI (Windoze NT)) then
I believe it's no great stretch to infer that your organization
really doesn't care about that community.
(As a sidebar, one correspondent thought I had unfairly excluded Apple
management from my earlier comments. I did not mean to do this, because
Apple bigwigs will have plenty of sins to answer for when they get to
MegaByte Purgatory; it's just that the MS and NS excesses are more
recent, and illustrative, examples of this trend.)
>Your insinuation (or personal attacks in your response to my earlier
> comments re: Vannevar Bush and Memex last month) do nothing to
> reinforce your argument and detract from otherwise interesting and
> valid points you make.
I went back and re-read that earlier (June) response, and saw nothing that
constituted a personal attack. I was, perhaps, overly sarcastic in a couple
of instances, but I didn't mean to offend. I did, in fact, take exception
to several of Craig ideas, but this would be a pretty useless forum if
we only wrote when we agreed with each other.
Earlier, I had also written:
>>... http, as a protocol, was designed to make file transfer easier
>> and more robust; I doubt that the designers had "document access =
>>document discovery" in mind as their primary goal.
Craig Summerhill responds with a very nice summary of the thinking of
some of the early developers of the http standard. I recommend it to
all who haven't read it, and I concede his point. I should have directed
my comments to implementation, rather than theory, concerning this, but
I am willing to admit when I'm wrong.
> Finally, Bruce Gilbert <bg7601s@acad.drake.edu> writes:
>> In the case of .pdf files, that means that we have to figure out
>> strategies for users to access this stuff; if we have to "kludge
>> it out" sometimes, that's fine, but we also need to be diligent
>> in our quest for even better ways to get what is needed to "the
>> reader."
> On this, we are in agreement.
We're actually in agreement on a great deal. (We both agree on the
revolutionary nature of the Web as a vehicle for information delivery,
for example; I noted this in my original reply.)
> The unfortunate reality of occupying
> that critical middle ground between vendors and users is that we're
> putting together a lot of "real-world" applications with chewing
> gum, spit, and chicken-wire.
And this is where we can get caught up in internecine trivialities.
The fragile nature of "the last mile" of networked information delivery (the
mile where most librarians and users find themselves) continues to frustrate
the "networked community" and hamper its growth and usability.
In order to cope, however, librarians need to take a little longer, broader,
and more philosophical view. Sure, .pdf has its drawbacks, but so does
ascii. We are quite used to dealing with relative strengths and
weaknesses in print resources (e.g., the EB is better, more comprehensive
encyclopedia than World Book, but for a 6th-grader doing a two-page
report on Sacajewa, the WB is probably a better place to start,) but when
we get to the same thing in electronic info, we too often gravitate to
what I would call "ideological" extremes ("networked information will
save the world" vs. "this crap will never replace print")
The task of the librarian, then, is to "keep her head" at all times;
to recognize polemical arguments, and to avoid adopting them; and,
ultimately, to work out a personal synthesis that continues to embrace
the user-service-oriented values of traditional librarianship, while
incorporating the new ways and means of useful technology.
If this sounds like a difficult task, that's because it is. I believe
the "grumpy" nature of some of this dialog springs from this difficult
environment. I've been accused of being "really grumpy" about this stuff,
but I just think I'm being realistic.
--
Bruce Gilbert http://www.drake.edu/bgil/www/bruce/bruce.html
Systems Librarian - Drake University E-mail: bg7601s@acad.drake.edu
"Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is
nibbled by a few." Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think," 1945.
