Subject: Re: Library Link discussion (fwd)
anthony.watkinson (anthony.watkinson@BTinternet.com)
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 18:03:36 -0000
Message-Id: <001701be4ae8$9d841620$713dac3e@default> From: "anthony.watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@BTinternet.com> To: <arl-ejournal@arl.org> Subject: Re: Library Link discussion (fwd) Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 18:03:36 -0000
On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Jean-Claude Guedon <guedon@ere.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Tony Barry <tonyb@dynamite.com.au> wrote:
> >
> > On 25/1/99, Jean-Claude Guedon <guedon@ere.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> > >
> > > I fully agree with Tony's assessment. The networks cannot telescope
> > > the chain into a mere scholar-librarian complicity, but it can bring
> > > them a lot closer together.
> >
> > The ideal chain is scholar to scholar. The fewer of us needed to sit
> > between one scholar, and another making money out of their need to
> > talk to each other the better.
>
> You say in other words what I tried to say, with one proviso : librarians
> do play an enormous role in facilitating the retrieval procedures of the
> scholar. They are the best equipped for that task and, therefore, should
> not be left out of the loop even though the ultimate logic of the
> situation is to help scholar-to-scholar communication.
>
> In all of this, we are exploring the ways to create the optimal
> possibilities for a society based on distributed intelligence.
I now totally agree with these sentiments of both Jean-Claude and Tony -
and I am a publisher. We are all in our functions because we want to
help scholars communicate with one another. I personally feel that
all the talk of a year or so ago about disintermediation either by
librarians or publishers was misguided because in the electronic
environment the functions of organisation/sifting/validation on the
one hand and navigating/discrimating on the other remain. It may be
different constructs that do the work.
Anthony Watkinson
<anthony.watkinson@btinternet.com>
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