I can see how one dichotomy isn’t really more useful than the other, and am definitely not trying to promote one, so if my use of the word “equally” seems excessive or disingenuous or something I don’t really believe in, it is because I just don’t know what is most important, and I think that is a good place to be.

Some of the best systems and collections folks I have known try take on a role as public service providers (not “ownership of user experience” which has its meaning tilted towards systems anyway), and some of the best public services librarians I know are always muddling with collections and systems.

I am sure that there is no one right way to do it, whatever it is. It is good that we/you/we are having these conversations.

Steve Shadle got a big hand for the line “I’m tired of public services librarians thinking they have ownership over the user experience.” And I remmeber thinking he had a point, but I wasn’t sure it was the one he thought he was making.

Anyway, I don’t know if Terry thinks we should teach databases - actually, I do and he doesn’t but I do. Not that we should teach “articles are always in databases” but we should know what databases are since most of our lives are in them and if we knew that we’d know that there are probably databases of articles too. And the space thing is a subject for another post.

Basically, I’d like to think about these things in a way that doesn’t dichotomize local/network or public/systems - but I’m not sure what that discourse would look like. Failure of imagination.

And I think you are suggesting that Terry would disagree with the idea that we have to teach that articles are in databases, because damminit, the articles don’t have to just be in the databases; the more we can bridge library research and the information tools and skills people need outside of school, the better informed our communities will be.

But I also think it is dangerous to even engage with a local/network dichotomy, because if public services librarians need to get riled up about anything, it should be the systems and collections staff who forward the idea that data and servers are the most important parts of libraries.

And yes, I concede - it is impossible to have a conversation about the future of the catalog without focusing on the catalog, especially in such Orbis-Cascadey times as these, but I am wary of the general trend to focus on building systems.

Equally important is that those resources, collectively, are held in trust for our communities. In all except the worst of circumstances, we do not invite corporations to make copies of our collections so that they may sell them online, or cede ownership of our catalog records to a not-for-profit organization in Ohio.

Equally important is our physical space, as limited, and as limiting as that space can be. Cleaning furniture may seem menial compared with writing the next great library software application, but it matters just as much.

And equally important are the teachers and mentors who help to put all of that information into context for our community members.

Part of me wants libraries to inspire awe and reverence - “Look at all of those books!” - and the rest of me knows we aren’t ever going to do that online, so why try.

The other thing your post related to in my mind was the recent post on Nicholas Carr’s blog (and I can’t believe I’m reading that guy’s blog), “Tom Lord on ritual, knowledge and the web“, where Carr re-posts a comment on one of his other posts in which Tom Lord describes the difference between language that carries knowledge and language that is “ritualized”.

And all I have to say about that is just to re-state the above: the context is what makes the library rich, not the content.