Interesting Snippet

I'm finally, after years of putting it off, reading Lewis Mumford's Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine Volume II. It was suggested to me when I was in library school years ago because of its common-sense arguments against allowing information storage and retrieval from ever becoming completely computerized.

Mumford can be thought of as a sort of sociological Luddite: he worried about the societal effects of mechanization on humans and society.

Every now and then, someone asks me if I think libraries are ever going to be shoved aside into irrelevance in favor of Google. My answer is no.

Mumford writes on page 190:

"The National Library of Medicine at Bethesda, Maryland has an information retrieval service (MEDLARS), designed to index the medical periodical literature of 2,800 journals...To compare the results of a computerized search with those made in a conventional manner, two members of the Radcliffe Science Library staff in England compiled a list of references on the same subject, covering the same period as the MEDLARS taped record. Though nine relevant references in MEDLARS were not discovered by the library staff, they dug out thirteen relevant references not included. Alike on grounds of promptness and low cost and qualitative value human agents proved preferable to the automation."

Now, this was years ago and technology has come a very, very long way. But the point that Mumford makes over and over--and a reality that hasn't changed--is that information takes creative thought and contextual ability to understand and that no machine ever, in his opinion (and mine) will ever be able to replace a human being in terms of helping other humans find information.

The Internet in the hands of the average user is, in my opinion, no match for a library lit by wax candles in the hands of a seasoned information seeker.