[Publib] Arguing Technology

[Carl Long]

"It behooves us to ask ourselves how many of us would still be 
librarians if the electricity went out, and the computer screens went 
blank."
Does that same line of thinking hold if "all the books burned up"? The 
right tool for the right job obviously, however, modern digital 
information technology can be vastly superior to print material for 
certain capacities. Dictionaries, indexes, and the like were almost 
meant to be digital with internal hypertext linking, advanced searching 
and sort functions. It's not that print indexes are better or worse than 
digital ones it's that they simply *cannot* do those functions.

Best Regards,
Carl Long
Reading Public Library
http://www.reading.lib.pa.us/

Backwage at aol.com wrote:
> The other day I was minding my own business, riding the train to work 
> whilst reading the paper when I overheard a conversation between two 
> fellow passengers.  They were both young folks, which by my lights 
> means less than 35; the topic was computers.  At the time, both of 
> them were fiddling with their devices, though the machines seemed to 
> have no connection to the topic at hand--this is just something that 
> kids do, like jiggle their legs and roll their eyes when adults speak.
>  
> I will spare you the particulars of the exchange except to mention 
> that it concerned the relative merits of one operating system versus 
> another--Mac and PC.  As usual in these confabs, it was war to the 
> knife from the start.  The two of them went at it from Allen Street to 
> Union Station, a distance of several lifetimes if one is trapped close 
> by and cannot find a distant seat.  It was like watching a married 
> couple squabble in a restaurant.
>  
> You see a lot of this in the library world.  Mostly, I think, because 
> the protagonists prefer such blather over more substantial topics.  
> Besides, the entire row marks the participants as being among the 
> elevated class which comprehends the guts of such discussions.  At 
> least it makes them important among themselves. 
>  
> I am old enough to remember when the tech-savvy kids would get 
> together to argue the qualities of various vacuum tubes.  The same 
> type of kids play with computers today.  
>  
> This is also something that you see in any industry where particular 
> tools are used to achieve certain results.  The computer folk wouldn't 
> want to think of themselves as mechanics, but they are.  Their 
> discussions are simply arguments over tools--the adjustable crescent 
> wrench over the box-end.  Where auto fixers congregate, there are 
> fierce rivalries over life-and-death decisions such as:  Proto 
> or Snap-On?  And, exactly when did Craftsman start going down 
> the tubes?   I have seen men ready to kill over the use of a 
> particular impact wrench to remove lug nuts. 
>  
> These arguments tend to spread out as the actual technical merits of 
> either choice are exhausted as topics.  Then you get into the 
> personalities of the particular inventors--the other side's founding 
> father being of course either a dyed-in-wool fascist or a sellout to 
> commercial interests.  There are people in the library world who know 
> more, and think better, of Steve Jobs than they do of any person who 
> has ever held the title of librarian.  Some of them think he should 
> run the country; others fear he does.
>  
> By now you may have gained the impression that these people bore me.  
> While true, the point of this is that they and their arguments over 
> which electronic wrench to use are not particularly useful.  In point 
> of fact, they are without substantial benefit to the user base.  As, 
> in actual fact, are quite a few of the current (and seeming eternal) 
> discussions over systems, hardware, processing, and the like.  It is 
> not that the library doesn't rest on a solid core of information 
> processing--it is that the library doesn't begin or end in the back 
> room.  Even now, when the catalog is an OPAC and every system is run 
> by or through a computer, the library isn't a computer.  It isn't the 
> Internet.  And it certainly isn't anything offered by a software or 
> hardware vendor. 
>  
> An old friend of mine has been writing books and magazine articles for 
> decades on a manual typewriter.  He is a writer, obviously.  Which 
> means he writes better than you, most likely.  You will probably not 
> write better than he on any computer, regardless of operating system.  
> If the entire computer world collapsed, he would still be a writer.  
> In fact, if his manual Underwood was lost, he would still be a 
> writer--and even if he ran out of pencils.  It behooves us to ask 
> ourselves how many of us would still be librarians if the electricity 
> went out, and the computer screens went blank. 
>  
> M. McGrorty
>
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