Looking at things from the outside-in
Libraries and librarianship July 21st, 2008
I’m a big fan of stepping back from predispositions, or assumptions, or just habits and looking at common experiences under a new light. (If you were around me in 2005, you probably heard me talk about the ridiculousness of librarian terminology and professional divisions. As I assimilated more of that culture, I internalized the absurdity, and by the time I was walking for my degree, even defending it. (But come on… “adult services librarian” still makes me chuckle.)) As a research topic, I would love to analyze how that “new environment adoption” works. I meant to blog the process, but that didn’t happen.
Richard micro-blogged a link I thought was interesting along these lines: a graphical designer looking at libraries. What insights can we gain from people whose focus is outside our typical maxims? Be sure to read the long version of the report, where she considers different storing/stacking/piling methods and comes around that shelves are the most functional. (Duh .. Although any library has every method of globbing books together.)
I don’t particularly care for her spine labels, but I like the evolution of thought in her notes (let’s do whole spine jackets to find things… wait, that’s terrible…) The outside perspective is interesting.
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