Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Can't See the Forest of Information for the Dead Trees on the Shelf

This was going to be a comment box response to David Lee King's article here ( http://www.davidleeking.com/2012/01/17/hey-milwaukee-youre-doing-it-wrong), but it took on a life of it's own so I'm posting it on my own blog.

Yes the signs are reading centered if not book centered. This does imply a judgement upon the activities suggested by the altered logos. Reading's primacy comes mostly from it being either the only way, or the only economical way information could be transported and archived. 

Is reading truly a better experience when online video/audio can accurately transmit audio or visual subtleties rather than relying on my imagination to be able to reconstruct them from a description? Will even the only semi-static text of an ePub or PDF (eBook file formats) help me connect with my friends unless they happen to be authors.

What I want to know is why aren't librarians at the forefront of indexing, categorizing and cataloging online videos, blog posts, and websites? Libraries already deal with subjective areas (e.g. humor) and controversial areas, and already try to sift signal from noise or information from conversation. If there's one group of people I could trust to put together a better tool than Google and Wikipedia combined, it's librarians. Is it time for libraries to invest in creating a digital collections department that focuses on more than eBooks and databases?

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