[1221] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
RE: Arms Clarification
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU ((Paul Buchanan))
Tue Sep 15 14:21:34 1992
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 10:50:06 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
From: "(Paul Buchanan)" <buchanan@wulib-jpb.wustl.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I think it's easy to over-draw Arms' analogy between libraries and computing
technology. The tensions which have occured over the last 10 or 15 years in
academic computing have arisen primarily because of a change in technology: it
is now technically possible to distribute computing technology whereas it was
formerly difficult. Institutions have largely chosen (or been unable) to
manage this technology shift and it has therefore gone its own way, driven
bottom-up by the technology itself.
In the larger view, this isn't quite the library paradigm. In fact, it has
always been possible to distribute and decentralize library service and there
is strong historical precedent for doing so. The modern central library is
not so much the "before" in this picture as the "after": the response to
early library models based on departmental or faculty collections. Of course,
the same tension between "unresponsive" central services and distributed but
inefficient services continues in libraries as we struggle to balance branch
services against the central university library.
The difference is that our institutions have recognized the nature of
the problem with libraries and have decided to try and manage it. So far,
few institutions show signs of successfully managing technology the same
way (or even recognizing that it is the same management problem in a different
technological garb). The point is that we (in libraries) have been around
this circle many times and there is no one "right" answer; there are only a
series of compromises and cyclical adjustments that one day may become the
computing model as well.
Paul Buchanan
Washington University in St. Louis
