Chapter 9 Textbook

1.      What are some of the messes in your life and how do you try to organize them?

I have a few messes in my life. One of them is music I have collected over a decade. Some of them are on CDs, iTunes, SonicStage, or Mini Desks. I do not have a MD player so there is no way I can listen or move them into my iTunes. SonicStage is software from Sony which saves music different format from iTunes, so there seems no way to move the music from SonicStage to iTunes. Majority of my music is on SonicStage, but I stopped using it because of inflexibility, and I bought an iPhone. I try to organize them by moving all the music to iTunes.

Another mess is photographs. All the photographs I had before getting married been organized, and the same thing for my husband. When we got married and began to live together, we started to share a computer. I moved all the pictures on a picture folder. Now my photographs are completely mixed with my husband’s ones. Moreover, many of the pictures are the same but we had named them differently. What I have been trying to do is organize them by year, then go over every picture. When I find the same pictures, I delete one of them. I believe that is the best way, but it takes time, so I haven’t done yet.

2.      What are your thoughts on the work of Valdis Krebs as presented beginning on page 180? Is this something that would interest you as an information scientist?

Yes, this is very interesting. This could happen in any working environment or organization. I am a person who is very strict about ordering. I think many times it is easier that contacting directly to teammates or other departments without communicating project managers. But on the other hand, I think actions should be taken case by case, and sometimes communicating project managers is necessary. I think it is important to educate employees that you are always part of a project, which means that the information or comments you send to others, especially other departments, can represent the whole project. So it is important to aware that if it is ok to communicate directly among teammates or other departments without routing questions and ideas through their own leaders.

Also, I think the work of Valdis Krebs helps the following situation. When I looked back my career as an archivist, there were times when my teammates and I would get emails and phone calls about questions regarding what we had archived and details about them. There were some patterns of questions, and two people received emails and phone calls much more than the rest of the teammates. I think that analyzing who gets what kind of questions how frequently would help efficient the work environment.

3.      Relate what Weinberger is saying about the definitional view and the prototype view to the information behavior models presented in this course.

I believe that the definitional view is related to environmental scanning. I think each mode of the environmental scanning defines certain way of viewing or scanning.

On the other hand, the prototype view is certainly related to the berry picking model. It would not be a linear process, but each step somehow leads a searcher closer to a goal.

4.      What are the library prototypes Experiment with identifying three levels of abstraction for libraries? Be sure to think about how different cultures may think about/abstract libraries.

I believe that the library prototypes for many countries would be materials, patrons, and librarians. Materials include printed books, eBooks, audios, DVDs, and so on. I am sure that depending on cultures or types of libraries, kinds of materials vary, but there is no way libraries exist without materials.

Next, I am certain that libraries exist for people in many countries, so patrons are necessary. In the digital age, there might not be as many patrons as it used to be physically in a library, but more patrons are accessing library’s service such as its homepage and catalog.

Last, I believe librarians are one of the library prototypes. Again, in the digital age, there may be a library without any librarian physically in a desk, but librarians are taking care of its website and catalog. Without librarians, it would not be possible for a library to fulfill its mission which is to provide high quality, easy, and equal access to all people.