Organization Monkey

no talking now.  just go.  look.  stunning, beautiful pieces of and about books.

brian dettmer’s book art — he calls them “book dissections”

(thanks, boingboing. pointing me to this link totally made my day.) 

from his artist statement: “Old books, records, tapes, maps, and other media frequently fall into a realm that too much of today’s art occupies. Their intended role has decreased or deceased and they often exist simply as symbols of the ideas they represent rather than true conveyers of content. They are reduced to status symbols or decorative devices; often displayed as trophies of intellect or hoarded and stored like nostalgic memories.”

have fun reading.

you probably know by reading this blog that i am a bit of an organization nut. i like things organized my way. at work my idea of ‘organized’ is to have nothing on my desk. visit me in my office sometime to see this in full effect. people often ask if i’ve just started working at the library, since my desk is so empty. it’s a personal preference, really; i just don’t like visual distractions when i’m working. but maybe you like a bunch of stuff on your desk, with all your current projects within arm’s reach. your stacks of papers and folders are arranged so that you know, without even looking, where to reach for something. both methods of organization are correct, aren’t they? they’re just different ways of accomplishing the same task. in the end, we’ve both organized ourselves.

i’ve been thinking about this difference in organizational styles recently, in relation to the library catalog.  part of my job is as cataloger, and that means i’m organizing information about books for your use.  but who’s to say that they way i organize that information is the way you want it organized?  i imagine that the kinds of information i find important about a book might not be so important to you.  and you probably think i’m missing some piece of information about the book.  would you appreciate having some say in what kind of subject headings i attach to books?  the popularity of current social bookmarking tools (e.g., del.icio.us, connotea, furl) leads me to believe that you do want some say in how your information is stored.  i wonder how this can be harnessed for use in an academic library catalog environment?