Here's an idea: library and information science (LIS) is not a science. It's more like a business model for advancing an ideology. This is most evident in the way LIS educators advocate so-called information literacy. While they recognize information as irreducibly diverse, they are only concerned with textual information and its derivatives.
The American Library Association (ALA) defines information literacy as "the set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information." By this definition, anyone with the skills to survive in the wilderness should count as information literate, even if he can't read text. He can still read his surroundings. But no LIS educator teaches how to spot and decipher cloud formations or animal tracks.
In the wilderness, there is no reason for what is called collection development. Any information that would satisfy the survivalist's needs is too volatile to be stored for future use. The optimal collection is always already present. It is the wilderness itself, subject to auto-revision.
Now the analogy between the library and the wilderness threatens to collapse in relation to intent. In the wilderness, the collection has no intent behind it. But if the survivalist is superstitious, he still might pray to a deity to supply him with the right information, a sign for good weather, perhaps, or game.
By the same token, a library user might appeal to a collection developer to stock the shelves with a particular book. But it's mere superstition that the collection developer responds to his needs. His needs are submerged beneath all that happens between making the appeal and such time that a copy of the book finally becomes available for checkout.
The collection developer only looks at aggregates when deciding what to collect. The user might be a part of that aggregate, or he might not. It's really not up to him - unless he's a crony.
The American Library Association (ALA) defines information literacy as "the set of skills needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use information." By this definition, anyone with the skills to survive in the wilderness should count as information literate, even if he can't read text. He can still read his surroundings. But no LIS educator teaches how to spot and decipher cloud formations or animal tracks.
In the wilderness, there is no reason for what is called collection development. Any information that would satisfy the survivalist's needs is too volatile to be stored for future use. The optimal collection is always already present. It is the wilderness itself, subject to auto-revision.
Now the analogy between the library and the wilderness threatens to collapse in relation to intent. In the wilderness, the collection has no intent behind it. But if the survivalist is superstitious, he still might pray to a deity to supply him with the right information, a sign for good weather, perhaps, or game.
By the same token, a library user might appeal to a collection developer to stock the shelves with a particular book. But it's mere superstition that the collection developer responds to his needs. His needs are submerged beneath all that happens between making the appeal and such time that a copy of the book finally becomes available for checkout.
The collection developer only looks at aggregates when deciding what to collect. The user might be a part of that aggregate, or he might not. It's really not up to him - unless he's a crony.
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