Sergio just posted a review of a new book, Teaching of Intellectual Property – Principles and Methods, that sounds great and we’ll order it post-haste. However, since today is the first day of summer, I thought I might offer a good summer read.
I was flipping through the pages of books we have recently acquired and stopped dead in my tracks when I found a book dedicated “To the librarians.” What’s not to love about a book dedicated to us?
And turns out it’s a terrific read. The book in question is this one:
Author: Weinberger, David
Title: Everything is miscellaneous : the power of the new digital disorder
Imprint: New York : Times Books, 2007.
Contents: The new order of order — Alphabetization and its discontents — The geography of knowledge — Lumps and splits — The laws of the jungle — Smart leaves — Social knowing — What nothing says — Messiness as a virtue — The work of knowledge.
Subject (LC): Knowledge management.
Subject (LC): Information technology–Management.
Subject (LC): Information technology–Social aspects.
Subject (LC): Personal information management.
Subject (LC): Information resources management.
Subject (LC): Order.
ISBN: 9780805080438
ISBN: 0805080430
You can learn more about the book by visiting its corresponding website and you can read a review of the book on Boing Boing. The author, David Weinberger, is affiliated with the HLS Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and his bio is here.
To give you just a little taste, on p. 133, in the Social Knowing chapter:
. . . Westlaw makes a good profit providing the standard numbering of court cases, applying proprietary metadata to material in the public domain. But just about every industry that creates or distributes content — ideas, information, or creativity in any form — exerts control over how that content is organized. . . .
This creates a conundrum for businesses as they enter the digital order. If they don’t allow their users to structure information for themselves, they’ll lose their patrons. If they do allow patrons to structure information for themselves, the organizations will lose much of their authority, power, and control.
The paradox is already resolving itself. Customers, patrons, users, and citizens are not waiting for permission to take control of finding and organizing information. And we’re doing it not just as individuals. Knowledge — its content and its organization — is becoming a social act.
Now that’s one book I’ll take pool-side this weekend.
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