A librarians’ group is meeting today at the Berkman Center to talk about the future of libraries. Gene Koo, Jake Shapiro, and Melanie
Dulong de Rosnay, all of the Berkman.

I’m supposed to give a discussion-opener later this afternoon. Here are the notes of what I’m thinking of saying:

– Two themes
   – metadata over content
   – socializing of knowledge

– Knowledge as content
   – K was a quality of a belief
   – Became content esp. with books
      – Good fit because K was believed to be universal, single and eternal – permanence of books
         – Christian belief in a single universal truth
   – Books created:
      – topics as self-contained
      – experts as containers

– Web/Net
   – Primary characteristic: Abundance
      – Abundance of good is scarier than abundance of crap
      – Web invented to deal with abundance by giving us links…gives human-mediated shape to the endless sea
   – Links destroy container model
   – Web as social realm leads to socialization of K

– Socialization of K is all about metadata
   – e.g., this is worth reading, this is wrong, this connects to that
   – Paper-based metadata throws out info
      – Digital includes it all
      – Means that in general we get good enough info (but is that good enough?)
   – What does this mean for digital libraries?
      – Library is all metadata
      – distributed content
      – Place for expert and social knowing

Question: Digital libraries have nothing in common with libraries?

(Pardon the compressed form. These are my notes.) [Tags: libraries everything_is_miscellaneous ]

Categories: Uncategorized dw