Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Steve Kemple
Dr. Daniel Roland
LIS-60600
21 August 2010
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).
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.
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:
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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:
EXPERIENCING INFORMATION
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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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.
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:
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.
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.