Kemple 1

Steve Kemple
Dr. Daniel Roland
LIS-60600
21 August 2010

Cognition, Continuum & Collaboration: A Prolegomena for

Libraries Present & Future
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
But somehow it isn’t only not just the words isn’t it? - Harry Nilsson

INTRODUCTION

This essay is going to begin by looking at the problem of describing works of art
and will then briefly investigate how the ascent of information technology as a
widespread social phenomenon has broadened awareness of this heretofore-obscure
problem. The problems will then be explored in hopes they will shed light on issues
central to the foundations of library and information science, drawing parallels between
the technical, philosophic and social issues of concern to the field of librarianship. This
will culminate in a series of propositions intended to serve as a prolegomena for
communication and collaboration.

The central texts around which this will occur are Foundations of Library and
Information Science (2nd Edition) by Richard E. Rubin and Future Libraries: Dreams,
Madness & Reality by Walt Crawford and Michael Gorman. Throughout this essay, the
following excerpt from Dr. Rubin’s text should be kept in mind: “Libraries and
librarianship are about serving people and the society as a whole” (304).

CONTEMPORARY ART – MATERIALITY AND ABOUTNESS

In the article “Works and Representation,” Ronald E. Day sets out to differentiate
the accepted notion of “work” in traditional bibliographic description from that which is
found in works of art. He observes that much of the art produced in the 20th century,
especially in the tradition of the avant-garde, cannot sufficiently be described by the
standards of bibliographic description (taken from Richard P. Smiraglia’s book The
Nature of “a Work”) as they are generally understood.

Whereas the traditional bibliographic concept of the work takes an

ideational approach that incorporates mentalist epistemologies, container-
content metaphors, and the conduit metaphor of information transfer and
representation, the concept of the work of art as is presented here begins
with the site-specific and time-valued nature of the object as a product of
human labor and as an event that is emergent through cultural forms and
from social situations (1644).

Day’s propositions rest on those of Martin Heidegger, conveyed in his 1971 essay
“The Origin of the Work of Art.” He characterizes Heidegger’s argument as: “a historical
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and philosophical account of the work of art that stressed it being an act of work and,
thus, a social event of constructive creation” (1646). He suggests this runs counter to the
established views of work among library professionals, embodied by the notion of
epistemic content, toward which he directs his subsequent critique:

The consequences for critically discussing the concept of work in the

context of an information culture or information society, that is, in the
context of a metaphysics of knowledge that pervades culture and society
today, is far reaching, not only encompassing a critique of what we see
today as professional education, theory, and practice in library and
information science and information management, but also demanding an
engagement with the modern concept of information in today’s late-
modern cultures and societies. Such an investigation [...] forefronts the
problem of the aesthetics of information as one of our chief ethical and
political horizons today (1646).

In “Records and Access: Museum Registration and Library Cataloging”,

published twenty years prior in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly (1988), Esther
Green Bierbaum addresses the same basic distinction between objects and information
containers. Bierbaum asks for understanding and collaboration among museum and
library professionals, comparatively describing analogous processes in their respective
fields. She describes the process of object registration in terms familiar to her audience
of library catalogers. Practical differences, as well as philosophic ones, are displayed side
by side for analysis. She explains how “the museum focuses upon the object,” facilitating
a “direct encounter with a unique [object or collection of objects].” In contrast, the
library “brings us information through intermediaries, or carriers of content” (106).

For Bierbaum and Day, a paradigm of objectness and aboutness are reflected in
museums and libraries and, generally speaking, works of art and works of writing. Day
argues that current descriptive practices reduce objectness to aboutness. This
undermines the intent and value of many, if not all, works of art, and is indicative of a
widespread reductionism as a byproduct of information culture. A danger posed by such
reductionism is the loss of materiality as a cultural archetype.

Conceptual works, minimalist works, and foremost, performance art

“happenings” are all types of works that emphasize their materiality and
their site-specific and time-valued characteristics, and that use these in
critiques of normative meanings and values in culture and society,
including critiques of art as representation. Live performance art cannot
be preserved as such. Recordings of such events constitute new and
different (often documentary) events whose meaning cannot be reduced to
the first, particularly when the art work intends to make manifest or
otherwise critique the representational status of such types of recordings
(Day 1649).

This problem affects not only the ability of art librarians to provide necessary
organization of art information; it affects their ability to enable access to that
information. Museum and gallery curators, making up one of the largest user groups of
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scholarly art information, heavily rely on the availability of art information. In her paper
“Comparing Practices in Art Libraries,” Kim Collins articulates this dynamic: “Museum
art librarians need to promote the connection that a well-maintained museum library
will enable curators to conduct in-depth research that will lead to more provocative,
scholarly exhibitions. Of course, museums want to fight the stereotype of being elitist
and ‘academic,’ but why can’t entertainment be scholarly and the scholarly
entertaining?” (80). In a response to an e-mail, Justine Ludwig, Assistant Curator at the
Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, writes:

One of the most important roles a curator takes on is that of a scholar. I

view publication as an integral part of what I do. Art information, much
like art itself, informs people of greater truths about themselves and the
world around them. We strive to create scholarship that illuminates the
aesthetic and adds depth to art.

In the same e-mail, Ludwig brings up points similar to those of Day:

One thing that I have been thinking about is that the current mode of art
documentation [...] is rather dated. Art is becoming more and more
technologically advanced, and I think that its documentation should
reflect that. [...] Also, I find there to be a failing in the documentation of
art that is not simply two-dimensional. Even documenting a photograph is
unbelievably difficult (you are going to spend quite some time color
correcting an image and then writing about the experience of a photograph
is always going to be personal and subjective). Sculptures, installation, and
video art are also impossible to document. We are only getting more broad
in our understanding of art.

While these difficulties are obvious in contemporary art, they are no less relevant
for historical works. Tracy Johnson, artist and art professor, brought up the difficulties
accessing art information without a requisite subject expertise. In many art library
image collections the only access point is the artist’s name. She brought up the fact that
Rembrandt and Goya, even to many knowledgeable about art history, are generally
thought of as painters.

What printmakers know is that Rembrandt was one of the most

experimental and diligent printers in history, and he advanced the art
exponentially. Goya, another painter, used aquatint in the most subtle and
beautiful manner. Yet if I wanted to find an incredible example of
aquatint, I would have to know that Goya was also a printmaker. Now
that's no problem for someone who has had a good dose of the history of
printmaking but for a student it could be a daunting task to winnow
through artists in search of “ . . .”.

In common to Day, Bierbaum and Ludwig is the centrality of experience in our

encounters with art and art information. As a profession, how ought we address an
experience with an art object, such as a performance (of greater dynamic temporaneous
extension than spatial) or a painting (of greater dynamic spatial extension than
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temporaneous)? Given a particular work, how does our experience of that work change
as it is represented in various forms of documentation or bibliographic technology?
What sorts of experiences do we have with those technologies in general? To this end,
Bierbaum incidentally affirms a central point of Day’s when she writes:

The library also brings us information through intermediaries, or carriers

of content. Each carrier is usually a member of a group of thousands
printed at the same time; the library’s focus is upon the content of any or
many of them (for instance, a content about silver-smithing); the
encounter, while no less "real" or informative, is not a direct, sensory
experience with the product of the silver-smith’s skill.

It is worthwhile to consider, qualify and compare our experiences with various

media (using the term in its broadest sense so as to encompass manifestations and items
of work, as well as any thing that serves as a surrogate to or documentation of that
thing), and to consider how it may change from one media to the next.

DREAMS, MADNESS & HYPERBOLE – A SERVICE PARADIGM

The role of technology in libraries is the topic Walt Crawford and Michael
Gorman discuss in their book Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness & Reality. Crawford
and Gorman frame (with no small amount of hyperbole) such considerations in terms of
a service ambition. While many of the arguments humorously reflect the time of it’s
writing (1994), there are a number of strong, and fiercely relevant, themes presented
throughout. A great deal of effort is given toward a proof that electronic text will never
outperform print, primarily on the basis that, “The facts are that books [...] work better
than any alternative for sustained reading” (17-18). It is interesting that as support to
this argument, it is suggested that linearity is compromised in electronic text; they
assert that linear reading is of more noble quality than nonlinear; consequently all
serious works must always be linear (23-24). While the fact remains true, at least to
some extent, that non-linearity is often a quality of electronic text; the values of readers
have shifted at behest of information technology. This is true in the creation of new
works and the reinterpretation of old. For example, a bilingual translation by C.K.
Ogden of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (quoted at the
beginning of the paper) is formatted for faceted Web browsing1.

Ultimately, Crawford and Gorman’s topic is technology as a means for service as

opposed to technology as ends. In the first manifesto-like chapter, they write:

Let us state, as strongly as we can, that libraries are not wholly or even
primarily about information. They are about the preservation,
dissemination, and use of recorded knowledge in whatever form it may
come so that humankind may become more knowledgeable; through
knowledge reach understanding; and, as an ultimate goal, achieve wisdom
(5).
1
“Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Hypertext of the Ogden bilingual
edition” <http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html>. Having made several unsuccessful attempts at
reading the text in print, I found this to enhance comprehensibility by virtue of its nonlinear form.
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This mirrors Rubin’s emphasis on service as the defining goal of libraries and
librarianship. “Underlying this notion of service is not just the betterment of the
individual, but the betterment of the community as a whole. This activity, of bringing
knowledge to people and the society, is the sine qua non of the profession” (304). Rubin,
as well as Crawford and Gorman, are openly indebted to the writings of S.R.
Ranganathan, especially his Five Laws of Library Science. Crawford and Gorman
formulate an updated variation on the laws:

1. Libraries serve humanity.

2. Respect all forms by which knowledge is communicated.
3. Use technology intelligently to enhance service.
4. Protect free access to knowledge.
5. Honor the past and create the future (Crawford & Gorman 8).

EXPERIENCING INFORMATION

Simply put, different information technologies create different experiences. If our

profession’s central concern is that of service, then mindfulness of the varieties of
experiences is imperative. Different information technologies represent information in
different ways. And means of representing, through the organization of, information is
central to our practice. There has been much discussion on what effects information
technology has on the way we think. A recent article in The Guardian summarizes much
of this contentious debate, presenting divergent opinions of various thinkers and
researchers. Among them is that of Maryanne Wolf, cognitive neuroscientist and author
of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, who writes:

I am an apologist for the reading brain. It represents a miracle that springs

from the brain’s unique capacity to rearrange itself to learn some-thing
new. No one, however, knows what this reading brain will look like in one
more generation. [...] How well will we preserve the critical capacities of
the present expert reading brain as we move to the digital reading brain
of the next generation? Will the youngest members of our species develop
their capacities for the deepest forms of thought while reading or will they
become a culture of very different readers – with some children so inured
to a surfeit of information that they have neither the time nor the
motivation to go beyond superficial decoding? In our rapid transition into
a digital culture, we need to figure out how to provide a full repertoire of
cognitive skills that can be used across every medium by our children
and, indeed, by ourselves.

If the cognitive abilities of library users are changing on a grand scale, as seems to
be the case, so must libraries, in the interest of serving humanity, change on a grand
scale. Rubin writes: “Understanding how people think, what they know, and how they
approach information problems can help designers create knowledge models within
their systems that more closely match the methods and data by which users can meet
their needs” (51-52). I would argue that the scope of this problem is beyond online
applications and designing “user interfaces”, that it is at the heart of our profession.
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Hearkening back to Day’s argument, it is easy to see there is a mutually affective

relationship between libraries and their users. If materiality is indeed a forgotten
concept, subsumed within the be-all reductionist paradigm of information, then the
fault is of those who organize and disseminate information, promoting the notion of
objects as “information containers”. However useful (and necessary!), this fallacy, it is a
fallacious nonetheless: two copies of the same novel are still two different material
objects, albeit with common characteristics (similar-looking ink on similar-looking
pages forming similar-looking patterns of similar-looking symbols, etc.). But without
such preposterous assumptions, libraries could not fulfill their mission! Then again, are
we really serving humanity if we are presenting a delusional version of reality? Or are we
just making humanity delusional?

In short, libraries exist to give meaning to the continuing human attempt

to transcend space and time in the advancement of knowledge and the
preservation of culture (Crawford & Gorman 4).

If I may temporarily venture into abstraction, any kind of description or

categorization is an expression of a worldview. Given an object n that we are going to
describe, it must be assumed that there is some means of loosely distinguishing it from
something else. In doing so, we establish a rudimentary picture of the world: everything
that is n and everything that isn’t n. If we wish to make some description of n, we do so
by establishing some sort of relationship between n and the term we wish to describe it
with. This is done by predication; the establishing of a relationship between two simple
terms. Language itself is a form of predication. We cannot categorize or define, much
less communicate, an un-predicated term. If I point at something, the act of my pointing
predicates that thing.

My argument is as follows:

1. Description is predication.
2. The function of predication is communication.
3. All forms of communication are social phenomenon.
4. Therefore, description is a function of social phenomenon.

This may serve as a basis for the social function of libraries. In concluding the
chapter “Librarianship: An Evolving Profession”, Rubin poses the following: “The key
question is whether the traditional social values of librarianship should form the context
for the exploitation of information technologies by librarians, or whether the new
information technologies creates a new social context that changes the meaning and
significance of libraries and librarians” (482). Perhaps it must be one or the other, but I
see no reason why both cannot be true.

THE COLLABORATIVE CONTINUUM: A PROLEGOMENA

In “Libraries, archives and museums: catalysts along the collaboration

continuum”, Günter Waibel, Diane M. Zorich and Ricky Erway describe a model for
collaboration among institutions. This continuum is described in five stages: 1) contact,
2) cooperation, 3) coordination, 4) collaboration, and 5) convergence (18).
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Collaboration moves beyond agreements. It is a “...process of share

creation: two or more [groups]...interacting to create a shared
understanding that none had previously possessed or could have come to
on their own”. Information is not just exchanged; it is used to create
something new. In collaboration, ‘something is there that wasn't there
before’. That “something” is not just a new idea, but a transformation
among the collaborating institutions (18).

Along similar lines, Walt Crawford and Michael Gorman write: “What unites
libraries is more important than the distinctions between libraries–it is imperative that
libraries should cooperate for mutual benefit” (114). Esther Bierbaum also fiercely
advocates institutional collaboration:

A deeper relationship lies at the level of communication: both institutions

are agencies of communication, telling us about our past, our present, and
our future. It is at this level that libraries and museums are most fruitfully
linked, where the language-based records and the tangible objects enhance
one another. It is at this level that professionals from each institution can
serve their publics better by knowing and using the resources of the other
(109).

While the above excerpts are discussing collaboration among institutions, I

would argue that this mirrors not only the sorts of social interactions that libraries have
the capacity to facilitate, but that it mirrors the logical bases whereby information is
organized. When we engage with information, we are actually creating something that
was not there before. Of course putting together a subject and a predicate is creative, but
no less is encountering subject-predicate combinations. In reading this sentence, you
are putting together the terms to create an idea that resembles the idea in my mind as I
write it. But, as Day points out, this is merely a representation, and every representation
is unique from that which it represents. For every person who reads and understands
this sentence, something new is created that was not there before. Therefore, not only
do libraries organize, disseminate, and facilitate access to information, they also
facilitate the creation of information as well as interactions between human beings.

Libraries are, and must remain, about human relationships in service of

individuals and communities. Libraries are, and must remain, complex,
multidimensional webs of collection and services–each enhancing and
complementing the others. It is only in recognizing and embracing that
complexity and its attendant ambiguities that libraries will be able to
continue their mission and thrive in an ever-changing society (Crawford &
Gorman 179-180).
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Works Cited

Collins, Kim. “Patrons, Processes, and the Profession: Comparing the Academic Art
Library and the Art Museum Library.” The Twenty-First Century Art Librarian.
Ed. Terrie L. Wilson. Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Information Press, 2003.
77-89. Print.

Crawford, Walt and Michael Gorman. Future Libraries: Dreams Madness & Reality.
Chicago: American Library Association. 1995. Print.

Day, Ronald E. “Works and Representations.” Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology, 59.10 (2008), 1644-1652. Print.

Johnson, Tracy. “Re: Art Information.” Message to the author. 12 Aug. 2010. E-mail.

Ludwig, Justine. “Responses to questions.” Message to the author. 13 Aug. 2010. E-mail.

Naughton, John. “The internet: is it changing the way we think?” Guardian.co.uk. 15

Aug. 2010. Web. 16 Aug. 2010.

Nilsson, Harry. Liner notes. Pussy Cats. LP. RCA Victor. 1974.

Rubin, Richard E. Foundations of Library and Information Science, 2nd ed. New York:
Neal-Schuman. 2004. Print.

Waibel, Günter, Diane M. Zorich, and Ricky Erway. “Libraries, archives and museums:
catalysts along the collaboration continuum.” Art Libraries Journal 34.2 (2009):
17-20. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text.
EBSCO. Web. 10 Aug. 2010.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Hypertext of the Ogden

bilingual edition. Trans. C.K. Ogden. Web. 12 Aug. 2010.