Home

Do we provide information or stories?

August 21, 2007 - 2:31pm — Blake

Anonymous Patron writes "Walt Crawford, over at Web Junction, postulates that libraries are in the business of providing primarily stories, and not information, and that we should bear this in mind as we market ourselves. It's an appealing notion, but I'm not entirely sure it holds water. Thoughts?"

  • Email this Story
  • identi.ca
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Twitter

Comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
August 21, 2007 - 5:04pm — Walt

Read the whole five-month-old piece

I'll stand behind the claim (which I've been making for more than a decade) that public-library-as-information-place is unfortunate and generally wrong, with "story" being an incomplete but better focus. I would ask that you read the whole thing, and maybe some of the more recent pieces in the six-part series (that one came out in March: Not exactly headline news) before saying it doesn't hold water.

  • Email this comment
August 21, 2007 - 6:43pm — Anonymous Patron (not verified)

Re:Read the whole five-month-old piece

Oh, I didn't say that it _doesn't_ hold water. I should have said that I'm reserving judgment until I do read the whole series. I really do think it's kind of a revolutionary idea, but I want to be sure that I agree with it before I go preaching it to my colleagues.(And there are plenty of older news stories that take a while to make their way to lisnews - no need to get snarky.)

  • Email this comment
August 21, 2007 - 6:49pm — Walt

Re:Read the whole five-month-old piece

Fair enough. The whole series is there (and it's a theme I've been touching on for years and years...)

  • Email this comment
Syndicate content