WORKSHOP #9

What are the "classical principles of librarianship"? What is the Library and Information Science? Is it really a Science^[1] or is it rather an engineering discipline concerned with a construction of a huge buffer of knowledge equipped with excellent retrieval tools, in other words are the librarians trying to decrease the entropy or introduce logos into prevailing chaos? What is the role of technology in library science? And that of Internet in particular? Does it change principles or is it rather a new and immensely powerful tool to implement old tasks?

When libraries started to introduce Internet ten years ago, they often started their transformation into the new type of institutions dealing mainly with Internet and also with "classical" collections. Since the human and financial resources are always limited, accenting the new role and functions of the libraries connected with Internet based services resulted in underestimating of the classical library collections and functions. Nowadays we often hear that the comeback is necessary. But is it possible?

How to find the balance in modern hybrid libraries? Which are the unique functions of the libraries in the overloaded information environment? And which are the functions they could or should share with other institutions (publishers, information brokers and others) or simply pass to them? Are the libraries prepared and willing to compete with other players in the information market? And are the libraries prepared and willing to cooperate among themselves? Are they prepared for change? Does not the most important and needed change in fact mean recovering of classical principles of librarianship in the light of Internet - i.e. just making more strict order in the enormous and dramatically growing mess?

Internet brings new dimension to this traditional mission of libraries - the possibility (and necessity) of international sharing. But only properly equipped information can be shared, otherwise it remains invisible. 80% of information in the web is the invisible web. How can we help to improve the access to this hidden information? Is this the task of libraries these days?

After discussing this general background we will go deeper into "classical" library operations and discuss how much Internet does or may influence them, how much they are and should be reconsidered or recovered.

1. Collection development (including preservation) and ACCESS 
2. Document description and ACCESS 
3. Library services, information gateways and ACCESS

Bohdana Stoklasová, Martin Svoboda

^[1] "a branch of knowledge conducted on objective principles involving the systematized observation and experiment with phenomena" - The Concise Oxford Dictionary