The library community at a technological and philosophical crossroads: Necessary and sufficient conditions for survival
✍ Scribed by Heilprin, Laurence B.
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1991
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 935 KB
- Volume
- 42
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0002-8231
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The community consisting of libraries and library schools is examined for the probability of its longterm survival in its recognizable present form. Evolution, especially the later human-artificial stage, shows essential functions tending to continue but intense competition to determine which structures (self-regulatory adaptive systems) will carry on those functions. The library community is a system that appears insufficiently equipped to compete adaptively over the long term. To be competitively invulnerable would require, in addition to carrying on its present essential functions, assumption of two new ones: (1) support of basic information science, including research leadership in the field, and (2) constant self-renewal through some drastic form of continuing education, e.g., joint commitment by schoa-I and student to lifelong cyclic return to the school, following the first degree. (An example of such a competitively invulnerable community is the medical community.) Assumption of both new functions would be necessary and sufficient. More are not needed, but anything short of both would probably lead to absorption of functions and personnel of the library community by other, more competitively adaptive informational communities.
There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their Life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. (Shakespeare, J&US Caesar)
An artifact is the result of imposing a mental design on a material object. An organization is an artifact: a design imposed on both human members and material objects. An organization designed for long life tends to differ from a transient organization because its design