From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!CAD:ucbesvax!turner
Newsgroups: net.books
Title: Re: Re: Poor quality public education - (nf)
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.817
Posted: Fri Mar 11 02:30:09 1983
Received: Sat Mar 12 07:18:46 1983

#R:mitccc:-40600:ucbesvax:13500004:000:2389
ucbesvax!turner    Mar  7 11:28:00 1983

	"janetr" has some interesting things to say (based, amazingly,
    on personal experience) on the subject of libraries as workplaces.
    As always, the quality of a service has more to with the people
    providing it than any other single thing.

	The observation that interested me most was about how working in
    a library was about as different from working as a programmer as you
    could get, especially in terms of age-range.

	This brings up the following question: what will WE all be like
    when we're in our fifties, surrounded by a huge, global electronic
    library (consisting of software services AND books, or things like
    books, in electronic form)?

	I would like to suggest that the respective fates of programmers
    and librarians are intertwined -- not least, because programmers might
    want to automate librarians, out of exasperation.  The ironic thing
    about this is that, in a way, a good programmer is ALREADY a hen-
    pecked librarian, badgered by bosses and neophytes alike on matters
    of system arcana.  (Some "programmers" I've known have fallen quite
    complacently into this role -- to the point of writing almost no code!)

	At U.C. Berkeley, library automation is just getting to its feet --
    and may soon fall back to its knees.  (I think they still use OS360 for
    a lot of things.)  This service, of course, had to pull free of the
    twin tar-pits of LIBRARY bureaucracy and D.P. CENTER bureaucracy!
    In other words, it's amazing that anything got done at all.

	Years ago, when I was a mere tad, first learning programming, I
    thought: f-ck school -- gimme a computer terminal attached to an
    encyclopedic database, and I'm set for life.  Since then, the technology
    for such things has advanced by a couple orders of magnitude, but
    we are hardly much closer to this goal.  (No, CDC learning centers
    don't count, in my view -- nor do APPLE drill-and-stupefy computer
    pseudo-games.)  What is in the way?  Well, the pyramid of Cheops tells
    us: technology is useless without being applied in a common-sense
    manner.

	Encyclopedia Electronica, anyone?

	    thots & comments welcome,
	    Michael Turner
    
    P.S. Pardon the kaleidoscopic presentation -- yes, my thinking is
	 usually about as incoherent as the foregoing.  Perhaps it's
	 more likely to spark interesting conversation?