Library Web Chic

Recently, MPOW got Safari Tech Books Online, and acquisition about which I was very happy. My staff and I use a variety of books from O’Reilly on a regular basis and sometimes it is just annoying to have to share. With Safari Tech Books Online I can use the O’Reilly books at my convinience when I’m working on a web project to look up code syntax or other stuff like Apache configuration syntax. To me this makes the purchase worthwhile. However, today I found an even better use for this collection.

I’ve been re-reading Ambient Findability by Peter Morville and after finishing it again I decided that it would be useful for the rest of the Web Management Committee to be able to read it as well. I own a paperback copy of the book and was thinking about making copies for the committee, when someone pointed out that it was an O’Reilly book and I should check to see if it was part of Safari Tech Books Online. Of course it was part of the collection and once I located it I discovered that pointing out portion for the committee to read was even easier than I had though because not only does Safari Tech Books Online have permalinks to individual chapter, but also sections of chapters. So I proceeded to create a blog post on the committee’s blog and send out the chapter/sections I wanted people to read.

In my mind this is such a step forward from copying either in paper or scanning to make a PDF. And if this advantageous to me, think about how professors could potentially use this technology with their classes. Creating reading lists would be so much easier. The biggests obstacle is that not everything is available in this broken up, downloadable digital format. Ironically, some librarians (like ALA president) Michael Gorman are against this sort of thing. In a Newsday article Gorman stated that

The nub of the matter lies in the distinction between information (data, facts, images, quotes and brief texts that can be used out of context) and recorded knowledge (the cumulative exposition found in scholarly and literary texts and in popular nonfiction). When it comes to information, a snippet from Page 142 might be useful. When it comes to recorded knowledge, a snippet from Page 142 must be understood in the light of pages 1 through 141, or the text was not worth writing and publishing in the first place.

I don’t believe that snippets have to be understood solely in their original context. The original context is important, but if this was the end all be all then why do we bother citing things in the first place. In my opinion, snippets have a great deal of value beyond their original context. In fact, I think that in terms of creating new knowledge, a snippet taken from its original piece, and given context by the person selecting it and putting it together with other snippets or new ideas may have greater value than the whole from which it originated. I think that this has a tremendous impact on the production of recorded knowledge. Scholarship is about the studying the literature of a given field and bringing something new to that field. Sometimes scholars bring something new by creating originally materials, but sometimes scholars bring something new by combining materials (whether they be old, new or both) in new ways. I believe that digitizing works is important because digital works can simpify that recombination process.