Library Science

My opinions seem to have rankled Mr. Dog. So he has been growling and snapping lately, which is curious and strange.
I do not take kindly to being targeted to vent ones frustrations, nor being slandered so viciously.
I obviously have different opinions than he (which is the point of being on this kind of forum), If we all were a monoculture here then the name of the place would be quite different.
But if the dog cannot muzzle himself, then what recourse do I have??
I do not wish to engage in mud slinging matches with emotionally challenged individuals (I engage here for other reasons) so, he can feel free to say whatever he wishes as is his right in a free speech world, but I am understanding now why some people use the ignore filter function.
When people choose to attack the messenger rather than address the message, then they have proven that they have nothing of value to add to the conversation.
 
Dogbrain here is a note for you to consider before you start typing personal insults again:

I, Brian
http://www.interfaith.org/forum/your-behaviour-time-to-calm-10880.html#post183212
It seems every few days I check in here there's childish fighting going on somewhere, and I'm getting pretty tired of it.

My theological position is someone who sees God as similar to Tao - beyond comprehension, with all facets of the universe and beyond as expression of God, and that all human religious and spiritual belief systems as personal and cultural explorations of this, usually communicated in an anthropomorphic manner that it more digestible.

Because of this viewpoint, gained through various ascetic experiences, not least NDE, communion with God, etc, I very much take the view that all religious and spiritual systems therefore have something of interest to offer in their learnings, not least in terms of the human condition and how this is projected in the writings.

I consider a persons actions to be far more important than their beliefs, and therefore have no real problem with the majority of mainstream religious beliefs.

CR and now IO exists to therefore allow for people of all religions to come together, and engage in interested discussion, with an open public forum for interested parties to ask interested questions - thus the forums as a learning experience.

I earn nothing from this - the ads were removed a long time ago, and they paid poorly anyway - the site has literally cost me thousands of dollars all the time that it's been running.

That's why I'm increasingly pissed off when I come here recently to find that a large number of members are actually treating the place as somewhere to vent and kick about other members. This is not what the place is for, and it won't be tolerated any further.

My free time is also extremely limited, so it's pretty tiring and sad to find myself having to waste what I have babysitting grown adults.

So I'm going to make the point clear here - all I have ever asked for on these forums is civility, and anyone not capable of that single, brief, and unchallenging condition of membership has no place here.

If you want somewhere to fight, to posture, to be a keyboard warrior, then there are plenty of unmoderated communities online where you can cuss and swear and fight to your heart's content.

Not here.

I'm going to be coming down pretty hard on anybody who appears disruptive - no I don't expect Mary Poppins, yes I expect and can allow for heated passion - but the level of personal attacks on this site has gone beyond any degree of acceptability, and there will absolutely be no further tolerance to it.
 
What library science attempts to do is to narrow the bottle-neck, to turn the raging flood of information into a more manageable stream and it does this by dividing reality into subsets. Examples of this are the various classification schemes, Dewey, Universal, Bliss, Library of Congress, these attempt to narrow the focus so that people are not overwhelmed.

Perhaps a simple example, In the Dewey Decimal System (hereafter DDC) we put books relating to the broad term 'technology' into the 600s and then sub-divide it as follows (I am using DDC 16 here)

601 Philosophy & theory
602 Miscellany
603 Dictionaries & encyclopedias
604 Special topics
605 Serial publications
606 Organizations
607 Education, research, related topics
608 Invention & patents
609 Historical, areas, persons treatment

All of these areas can be further subdivided by Geography (ie, nations, states, counties) and often by time period and further by specialities within a subfield. An example.

500 Natural sciences and mathematics
510 Mathematics
516 Geometry
516.3 Analytic geometries
516.37 Metric differential geometries
516.372 Euclidean geometry

Now, if you spend any time using it, it is clear that the DDC represents a 19th century approach to the aggregation and division of knowledge. But, here is the thing, ALL systems try to do these two basic things, a: give you access to knowledge in the area of your interest and b: attempt to help you not to drown in informational overload.
 
Good information about librarians! We need them increasingly it seems.

kiwimac said:
What library science attempts to do is to narrow the bottle-neck, to turn the raging flood of information into a more manageable stream and it does this by dividing reality into subsets. Examples of this are the various classification schemes, Dewey, Universal, Bliss, Library of Congress, these attempt to narrow the focus so that people are not overwhelmed
Click to expand...
Perhaps the Dewey Decimal system is a response to the problem.

Dennis Diderot 1755 said:
As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.
Click to expand...

(I found that quote in Information overload - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
 
kiwimac said:
What library science attempts to do is to narrow the bottle-neck, to turn the raging flood of information into a more manageable stream and it does this by dividing reality into subsets. Examples of this are the various classification schemes, Dewey, Universal, Bliss, Library of Congress, these attempt to narrow the focus so that people are not overwhelmed.
Click to expand...
Possibly of interest is an article in American Economic Review with an article called On the Shoulders of Giants. The article tangentially touches the topic of this thread in that it sees accumulation of knowledge as manageable, the hiding of research knowledge as harmful. In the last line of the abstract the authors say "we find that effective institutions amplify the cumulative impact of individual scientific discoveries." It says cumulative knowledge is good and that a good research institution aims to enhance the research of other institutions. Its data and its conclusions suggests that government policy should require the sharing of knowledge that is gained with the support of public funding.

American Economic Review: Volume 101, Issue 5, August 2011
Article DOI: 10.1257/aer.101.5.1933
 
The growth of knowledge is, in general a good thing. Librarians have eased the impct of this explosion so very much, not just with organizing structure, but with the specialization Dream refers to. For instance I use two libraries which are co-located quite extensively, onr reference librarian focuses on research and development (logical, since she works for the Air Force Research Lab) and one focuses on applications (logical because he workd for the Air Force Institute of Technology). And there is a third "Co-operative web-based" library run by all the Colleges and Universities in town that focus on the academics. It all works out quite well.

I believe one problem with the web is that it does not have this kind of gatekeeping. So when one finds information on "burning water" one assumes automatically that it is caused by fracking when in the most famous instance it was caused by a new water well drilled into a surface structure rich in gas. Or when you look up an article on HAARP one find that it must be a weapon because DARPA (Defense Advanced Projects Agency) is involved; it was involved in DARPANET, which became the web, is it too a weapon of some sort?

I am not saying fracking or DARPA are good. Its just that one does not get focused information on the web. The kind of focused information I get when I do a library search (or rather the librarian does) on say trainer aircraft or GPS implementation.

Good thread!
 
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