Books

Mission of the library redux

Lorcan 1 min read

I heard Anders Söderbäck of the Royal Library in Sweden speak in Lund last week on the perennial topic ‘what is a library’. He reminded us of Daniel Dennett’s remark:

This in turn reminded me of a post I did here a while ago about Dan Chudnov’s definition of the mission of the library:

Dan Chudnov has an interesting post on the mission of the library. What is the all-consuming mission of the library? His answer is an interesting one, which on reflection works surprisingly well. He argues that his professional mission as a librarian is this:

Help people build their own libraries.
[Because this is the business we’ve chosen | One Big Library.]

What I like about this is that it – if I understand it correctly – covers emerging as well as current scenarios. Examples: to help with the creation, organization and curation of locally created materials, or to help with shared bookmarking/citation management/reading list services. As I suggest elsewhere we are developing a new vocabulary of collections: playlists, reading lists, repository, … [Hedgehogs]

Here is Daniel Dennett in Worldcat Identities.
Related entry:

Share
Comments
More from LorcanDempsey.net
Smile: let's see your teeth
Books

Smile: let's see your teeth

I was excited to discover the graphic novel Smile by Raina Telgemeier. The subject matter has strong personal resonances for me.
Lorcan 3 min read
icon

Lorcan Dempsey dot Net

The social, cultural and technological contexts of libraries, services and networks

Great! You’ve successfully signed up.

Welcome back! You've successfully signed in.

You've successfully subscribed to LorcanDempsey.net.

Success! Check your email for magic link to sign-in.

Success! Your billing info has been updated.

Your billing was not updated.