Libraries facilitate the creation of new meaning

A comment was made recently that merging a public library IT system and a municipal/city IT system would be like trying to merge a hospital IT system and DaimlerChrysler’s IT system. They are not compatible and were built for different purposes. This got me thinking about what the fundamental difference might be.

City IT systems deal with information in predefined contexts or formats with specific, associated meanings, e.g. tax bills, polling information. Libraries used to handle all information in this same way and to a minimal extent still do. But the revolution and fundamental difference is in how we currently handle or approach information.

Think of information as spread like objects across a table. Context and meaning is created when we organize these objects. Two forks, two plates, two glasses on the table and our mind begins to perceive a cultural pattern: two place settings perhaps? And you may have thought dinner but then realize there are also associated price tags: a yard sale perhaps? You get the idea. Sometimes meaning comes before context and we impose that context to achieve that specific meaning. Sometimes we play with context and it reveals patterns and meanings in the information we have never conceived before.

Libraries are now operating in an environment where we can separate information from context and in this process we separate out the original meaning. Libraries, by promoting and ensuring freedom of access to information and interoperability, allow not just the recombination of this information but the incorporation of any new information into newly defined contexts, with these contexts created by users or meaning created by users. Thus Libraries end up promoting the capacity to create new meaning.

What we do as Librarians is sexy. And, obviously, we like procreation. We promote the creation of new context and meaning. Not only is the medium the message, if I understand this concept correctly, but also that the process is now a message.