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After you have fun, you can think of a question. What does this tell us about the future of library and librarian?

I will need to make a reference to David Weinberger’s theory on “The Three Orders of Order” to answer this question. Of course, a library must fulfill its duty by gathering sources of information, and then attempting to organize them. It is logical to assume that the more a collection will increase, the more difficult it will become to organize it. This also means greater possibilities for desired items being lost in the shuffle, therefore irretrievable. What contributes to the difficulties is never really the increase of the amounts in itself, but rather there are so many books that can belong to so many different fields of study. Whatever model needs to be used for organizing the books, it needs to be carried out all the way. The introduction of the Dewey Decimal System managed to solve the problem, but the man who invented it (and he was a very eccentric man indeed) had been corrupted by his Christian bias and Western Eurocentric views. Just about any book that concentrates on fields outside of those spheres would obviously have some kind of difficulty making its way into a collection that utilizes this model. Despite the imperfections, including some of its discriminating features, libraries still use this system on the grounds that it gets the job done at the least. Regardless as of how the actual books have been arranged, computer software systems offer so much flexibility in terms of organization. The availability of books within the library can be shown just by typing any word in the search engine. When the algorithm used by the search engine is unable to display the results that the patron had been seeking, the search can be narrowed down even further through certain filters, allowing users to seek an item by the author, title, date, publication, genre, etc. Through the use of folksonomy, people are able to exercise their own methods as of how they identify items by tagging them. Although these features are giving the patrons better chances of finding what they need, whatever has been invented and introduced shall always remain far from perfect.

What patrons need to realize is that librarians cannot do everything for them. Just because librarians spend a lot of time surrounded by books, it does not necessarily mean they actually take the time to read them all. It is never as though a patron can just provide a description of a book with just a few details and expect a librarian to know automatically what the person is talking about and then immediately retrieve it. Of course a librarian needs to know how the library’s organizational system works, be it the Dewey Decimal System or the Library of Congress System. As the libraries incorporate newer technologies for their services, it is just as vital for the staff members to know how to use the equipment as well. Whatever resources the librarians are able to utilize, the most they are really able to do is narrow down the search. Without the guarantee the item will actually be found all the time, the patrons need to take it from there. The patrons also need to realize that since the librarians, who are not perfect, have organized the materials based on models that are not perfect either, a particular item may not always be found in locations they anticipate. For example, there is a book on French cuisine. The librarians would have to decided as to whether it should belong in a section devoted to French culture or cooking, seeing as how it covers both fields. The patrons can debate all they want as to what section it should have belonged, but it in the end, this is the decision the librarian made for the sake of getting the job done. At least the computer system is more capable of reaching a compromise. However, even if the computer system is able to give an exact location as of where the item is located, it does not necessarily mean it will be found. Because most patrons never take the time to familiarize themselves with any organizational system, they have a tendency to throw books into some of the most random places all over the library. Regardless as to what sort of solutions are being provided in the future, whether they are intended for the physical or digital formats, something will always get lost in the shuffle in one form or another. Regardless as to how efficient the system becomes, the patrons will always have certain issues to bring up to the librarians. Then again, it is because of those complaints that technologies evolve.