Should Librarians "control" classification and information?
Siva: “We need search engines. And we all need better organizational skills (see tagging etc.) But librarians are the best trained and best skilled. And they have spent about a century debating the ethical, economic, political, and technological ramifications of classification, organization, and presentation.”
Very true. But does it follow from the last statement — that we know a lot about the implications of classification — that we should default to allowing librarians presumptive control over the classification of printed knowledge? The fact that they are trained and skilled means that we have little to fear, true (though the socio-economic and political implications of classification apply equally strongly to classification by librarians), but the converse does not automatically follow — that the untrained and unskilled automatically or necessarily put us at risk. This is information content, not medicine. Most of the time, when it comes to information, Western tradition and policy reject concentrated control and enforces a distributed information creation and distribution model. That idea, among others, is part of the normative content of the First Amendment. We do, in fact, often trust the people to organize information for themselves. Suppose Google offered an interface that allowed Book Search users to tag results. Folksonomy, anyone?
Nobody is suggesting a librarian autocracy over classification and organization any more than anyone is suggesting that only fire fighters put out fires.
My point is that it is counterproductive for the very people who do things best (the publicly-minded and accountable professionals) willingly sign over control to an unaccountable private entity. It makes even less sense for people who champion openness in standards, software, culture, etc. to cheer on an unaccountable private entity that has no willingness to engage the public in matters of standards, principles, etc.
There are real issues here. It's not just some "priesthood vs. pirates" thing. It's about the fact that Google does not answer to us and the libraries that are giving away the treasure have abrogated their responsibility to defend the very values that librarianship supports.
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