theorywatch

Of course there’s the inimitable Michael Buckland of UC-Berkeley in his Library Services in Theory and Context:

“Writings on library collections have, understandably, concentrated on procedural aspects of selecting material. The purpose of the library collections is generally discussed briefly, if at all, with a vague phrase about how, for example, a university’s library collections “support the academic programs.” The library is often referred to as a center for the community, as the heart of a university, or as the laboratory of the humanities, but studies of library use have concentrated heavily on surface phenomena, such as frequency of visit or loan statistics. There has been far less examination of how the use of library materials relates to learning, to research, and to the broader context of library service. What are people doing with library materials when they use them? How is the role of a collection related to other aspects of library service? How does the cultural context in which the library is set affect the collection?….

The standard phrase concerning collections of library materials is that they “support” the purposes of the community served and that those served “use” the materials in the collections. The terms “support” and “use” are not very evocative. However correct the words may be, they do not tell us much about how the materials support the programs, nor about how the materials are used, and even less about why. More formally it is said that collections contain “relevant information,” a phrase composed of two words which have been used in varied and confusing ways. Nevertheless, if these terms have a meaning that can be understood, then it should be possible to rephrase and discuss them usefully in other terms.

The intrinsic interest of photos, books, fossils, paintings, etc., is enormous. However, this interest needs to be balanced against the purpose of the library. In general the purpose of the library is, or should be, to constitute a resource for answering inquiries that arise…. We have been using the term “inquiries” in a very broad sense, ranging from research concerning matters apparently not known to anyone, through learning what is not known to the individual, to perusing texts for vague curiosity and amusement. The intended outcome is that library users will become better informed….

One learns from the examination of various sorts of things. In order to learn, texts are read, numbers are tallied, objects and images are inspected or listened to. In a significant sense library materials are used as evidence in learning—as the basis for understanding. One’s knowledge and opinions are affected by what one sees, reads, hears, or experiences. Textbooks and encyclopedias provide material for an introduction to a subject; literary texts and commentaries provide sources for the study of language and literature; arrays of statistical data provide input for calculations ,and inference; statutes and law reports indicate the law; photographs show what people, places, and events looked like; citations and sources are verified; and so on.

In each case it is reasonable to view library materials as evidence, though without implying that what was read, viewed, listened to, or otherwise used was necessarily accurate, useful, or even pertinent to the user’s purposes. Nor need it be assumed that the user did (or should) believe or agree with what was read. In this view collections are regarded as selections of material of actual or potential usefulness in meeting the sorts of inquiries regarded as appropriate for the people for whom library service is provided…. Unfortunately, in the apparent absence of well-defined and widely accepted terminology, any such discussion is liable to suffer from the need to coin new terms or to use existing terms in ways that are not quite standard. In particular, the terms “evidence,” “interpretation,” and “summarizing” will be used in ways that are not customary in the literature of librarianship, and that are not entirely satisfactory.

Viewing library materials as selections of potential or putative evidence enables us to examine library use more deeply. What do people do when faced with evidence? They sift, they excerpt, they evaluate, they summarize, and they may well add to the cumulation of evidence.”

So, to start building a Buckland-style typology reminiscent of his “Information as Thing” matrix: collections of evidence, and collections as evidence?

collections