Libraries have always given me a sense of calm. As I enter, I’m met with hushed movements of patrons and the smell of printed paper. Whether I arrive with a clear intention of what I am taking home or not, I always take a stroll through the stacks, feeling the sense of moving through a maze of stilled information awaiting my curiosity.
Although it is difficult to impress upon generations of students the importance of searching for objects vis a vis the “the first order of order,” (Weinberger, 2007) perhaps the search for objects and relationships between them can be had by creating a digital stroll through an online world filled with first order objects. Instead of being met by a stringent set of indexing from a database interface that requires a specific word that will (fingers crossed) be tagged in the corresponding metadata, like Sir Martin’s explorations in the physical world the researcher could cull the digital landscape for hidden treasures: original letters; early photographs; clay tablets scene from 360* vantage point through VR.
Nina Vestburg is correct in analyzing the digital database and how it will be used. No longer will it be tied up behind hopeful clicks made like the roll of a die: moving forward we must ask of the database, as Vestburg has, “for whom it is intended: the same people, often specialists, who made use of the analogue archive, or a new and expanded audience, perhaps largely made up of amateurs?” (pp 481). I believe it is the latter. As a community we are continuously socialized to expect digital access to the information of the world through our Google and Wikipedia searches, so why not the contents of the library?
Thanks, LoriBeth!! I can see how Vestberg’s piece resonates with your *own* project, which aims to connect “amateurs” to primary sources, and to convey the charisma of “first order” materials.