[Sigia-l] Findability

[Karl Fast]

> >In my experience librarians usually don't talk about this
> >distinction very much. They tend to be more interested in the
> >imposed metadata and dismissive of algorithms. After all, how can
> >some algorithm compete with the human brain?
> 
> Karl, I hope to some extent you are being facetious! 


I was merely saying that librarians (and IA's) tend to believe that
the traditional, manual, human-centric approach to organizing
information is the best solution.

On the other hand, computer scientists are too dismissive of the
manual approach and strive to replace everything with algorithms.


The purpose behind my comment was to argue that the way LIS tends to
classify metadata is too narrow. They classify it in terms of how
the metadata is used. They don't classify metadata in terms of how
it is generated. Why not? Because the worldview in LIS tends to be
dismissive of algorithms (this is more true among librarians than
among "information scientists").

My opinion is that (a) a balance is required and (b) that balance
will keep shifting in favor of algorithms because algorithms will
evolve at a much faster pace than we will.

Not *that* comment might raise a few hackles.


--karl