theorywatch

And a brilliant example of “practice-in-theory” is reflective practitioner par excellence Thomas Mann, the reference maven and fearless gadfly of the Library of Congress. His most recent paper, “What is Distinctive about the Library of Congress in Both its Collections and its Means of Access to Them And The Reasons LC Needs to Maintain Classified Shelving of Books Onsite, And A Way to Deal Effectively with the Problem of ‘Books on the Floor’” can be found at the Library of Congress Professional Guild website. While it’s not formally “published,” it most certainly is “diffusing” rapidly throughout the community of practice!

theorywatch collections, practice

I thought I was done with my little collection of those who are “theorizing the collection,” but I can’t resist another take on it, this one from IBMer James W. Cortada. Dr. Cortada is well known for his historical work on the evolution of computing in American organizations, especially The Digital Hand trilogy, but I didn’t realize that he was actually a bit of a collection theorist until I saw his “Save the Books” in Perspectives, the American Historical Association’s newsletter.

He’s right about the endless weeding of this type of material in most libraries (”obsolete” computer manuals, for instance, are a mainstay of library booksales around the country) but wrong, I think, in thinking that this is a library issue: it’s an archival one, and companies like IBM (who gutted their own corporate libraries over the past decades, as I can attest) need to contribute to this type of collection, both in terms of material and support.

And who better to promote such an effort than Dr. Cortada himself?

theorywatch collections

So then there are the Prelingers…. whose theory of “the collection” is grounded (quite empirically, as shown by the picture below!) in a rather contrarian hypothesis about the nature of the “post-digital library.” One might call their approach “theorizing by doing… and doing…. and doing.”

This is Rick Prelinger’s blog and this is Megan Shaw Prelinger’s.

theorywatch collections

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?

theorywatch collections

Marlene Manoff, associate director and collections manager at Hayden Humanities Library at the MIT Libraries, might be considered the “materiality girl” of digital collection theorizing, as her recent work explores theories on the influence of form (or format) on the content and communication of digital objects inside and outside collections of various types. Her articles include:

“Hybridity, Mutability, Multiplicity: Theorizing Electronic Library Collections.”
Library Trends - Volume 48, Number 4, Spring 2000, pp. 857-876

“Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines.”
portal: Libraries and the Academy - Volume 4, Number 1, January 2004, pp. 9-25

The Materiality of Digital Collections: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives.”
portal: Libraries and the Academy - Volume 6, Number 3, July 2006, pp. 311-325

Nice library she’s got there too!

theorywatch collections

I’m tempted to post this as “Theorizing the Collection 5,” but since the individual in question is apparently an artist rather than an academic (or a librarian!), I’ll just call it “the aesthetics of deaccessioning.” However, Julia Weist’s unique reading/weeding research project into why romance novels fail to linger on the shelves is far from MUSTIE. Now, this is something that I would have loved to see at the ALISE “innovative research” sessions in Denver this January!

theorywatch collections, librariana