toc 108 College & Research Libraries March 1999 Guest Editorial A Fold in Time Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, tells the following story about the painting Juan de Pareja by Velasquez. In conduct­ ing his research prior to purchasing this masterpiece Hoving and his team were allowed to examine the painting in pri­ vate. In the process they made an extraor­ dinary discovery. The painting had been folded to fit the frame. Fortunately, the fold had not harmed the canvas. When the painting was finally displayed at the Met the proper size frame was provided.1 As librarians we build frames. Catalog­ ing, classification, and library buildings are among our most notable of these. My colleague Fred Batt suggested that I in­ clude collection development policies. We fit the world into these frames. It is im­ possible of course for us to capture the world as it is. We can only approximate it. What do we miss? How important is what we miss? Some of our frames may be called para­ digms. Ownership and access are the most common. Others receive little atten­ tion. In fact, we have not done enough to discover new frames or to expand our awareness of the many types of existing frames in order to serve society and its people more effectively. For over twenty years I have from time to time expressed opinions that run counter to the prevailing thinking in our profession. In The Client-Centered Academic Library, I expressed some of these views in a systematic way and proposed a pro­ totype organization quite different than existing libraries in purpose and struc­ ture. 2 The potential far reaching impact of computers on libraries was one of the factors that in my mind would provide the supportive conditions for the design of a client centered library. Shortly after the publica­ tion of The Client-Centered Aca- demic Library I became aware of an important error in my thinking. I had proposed a new type of library structure based on the assumption that the most important changes neces­ sary to accomplish this were organiza­ tional. In fact, they required an entirely new paradigm, a new way of thinking about the role and purpose of libraries themselves. This change was necessary before any organizational changes of the magnitude suggested could be under­ taken. Essentially my view was that li­ brarians dealt primarily with the struc­ ture of information (the frames analogy) and stopped short as professionals from dealing meaningfully with the content of information. Behavioral and attitudinal norms within the profession prohibited this degree of attention to content and were reinforced in theory by the para­ digms in use and upheld in practice day to day. I see the need for a paradigm in librarianship that recognizes and pays attention to the context of information as well as its content. A few months ago I had an experience that led me to move beyond a paradigm formation based primarily on the content of information. As I walked past the Uni­ versity Archives I noticed a group of people sitting listening to a lecture about an important collection we had recently acquired. The archivist was providing her audience with a context for the contents of the collection. She was describing the background conditions existing at the time the resources in the collection were being produced and gathered together. 108 This context was equal to or greater in importance than the content. As a result of this experience and my reflections based on it, I see the need for a paradigm in librarianship that recog­ nizes and pays attention to the context of information as well as its content. For example, a context for information on the early growth of snow boarding as a sport might include the social and cultural at­ titudes of snowboarders toward skiers, their clothing, and status orientation. The attitudes of skiers toward snowboarders would also be informative in a contextual sense. As we near the end of the 20th century observers have begun to stress the impor­ tance of context. Without a suitable con­ text the enormous amounts of informa­ tion (content) available on most subjects cannot be adequately understood or structured in a meaningful and effective manner. In Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace James O’Donnell notes his willingness to pay for help to find and filter the ocean of data at his door. Accord­ ing to O’Donnell, librarians are already leading the way. “Can we imagine a time in our universities when librarians are the well-paid principals and teachers than mere acolytes? I do not think we can or should rule out that possibility.”3 As we move to provide more content and a suitably encompassing context, we begin to reach users at higher levels ­ knowledge, wisdom, and the enhance­ ment of life. By customizing our services to the greater needs of our clients we move beyond the banality of digits to- Editorial 109 ward the more abstract but more reward­ ing realms of knowledge formation and the pursuit of wisdom. In this world if we primarily contribute more bytes or disjunctive smatterings of information we will be merely adding to the information overload in our society. We will also fail to reach beyond the obvious to the more fundamental challenges facing our society. No one else but we ourselves Handcuffed us, comfortably in the face of our fear That’s why we offer you our two bound palms Instead of unfolded wings. Ivan Radoev4 Let us move beyond digital libraries to build whole earth libraries. Let us step back from reaching down for a handful of sand. Let us reach instead for the stars. Let us unfold our wings. CHARLES MARTELL (A former C&RL Editor) California State University, Sacramento Notes 1. Thomas Hoving, Making the Mummies Dance: Inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 259. 2. Charles Martell, The Client-Centered Aca- demic Library: An Organizational Model (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983). 3. James O’Donnell, Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 90. 4. Ivan Radoev, “Ballad for the Future,” in Clay and Star: Contemporary Bulgarian Poets, trans. and ed. by Lisa Sapinkopf and Georgi Beleve (Minneapolis, Minn.: Milkweed, 1992), 58. << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /All /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /CMYK /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 1 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo true /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts false /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 151 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages true /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 151 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 600 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.16667 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile () /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU (IPC Print Services, Inc. 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