Serendipity is a huge topic in librarianship. Heck, it's a huge issue in information and knowledge organization, period.
In fact, serendipity is one of the things most organizational systems are designed around. Dewey and Library of Congress, the two ways of organizing a library that you are most likely to be familiar with, both aim to "facilitate serendipity" by grouping similar volumes together. It's why you can go to "The Cookbook Section" or "The Canadian History Section"of the library and why we don't just organize all the books, fiction and non-fiction, by author's name or title. We want you to go to a section looking for a specific book and realize "hey, here's that book I was looking for, but this one right next to it is actually going to be better for what I need!"
We can get into all the arguments we want to about whether or not it's really serendipitous if it's been arranged that way, engineered serendipity if you will, but the fact is that it is useful, helpful and just plain fantastic whether or not it's "true" serendipity.
But I'd always just taken the word for granted. It's probably this or that Greek root meaning "divine guidance" or some such, peppered with a little Latin, left to stew in 3 or 4 different romance languages, before finally being looted by English. Or so I thought...
Lesson 97: The term "Serendipity" was inspired by a (mostly) Persian tale called "The Three Princes of Serendip" in which the titular three princes come upon information through happenstance and coincidence and are able to infer all manner of things.
The tale had been printed, reprinted, retold, reformed, combined with other tales, modified through the years adding elements from different tales from other locales or inspiring similar tales in other locales, but eventually made it to a book Horace Walpole read as a boy. It was this "silly fairy tale" that inspired him to coin the term "serendipity" in 1754.
If you're interested in reading a summary of the story, learning more about these Princes of Serendip and how the word serendipity came to be, I found this article in two parts that explains it all quite in depth.
Happy reading!
Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organization. Show all posts
Monday, April 2, 2012
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Day 11: Laundry day / See you there / Underthings / Tumbling
An interesting confluence of fate. Because I was running a little late, I ran right past my friend from middle school/early high school, and didn't even know it until he posted on my Facebook wall that he thought he saw my doppleganger. I'm sure there's a lesson in that...
But no classes today, just work. I had a rather redundant feeling lesson on library organization and shelving order. My official supervisor, after more than a week of me working there, taught me how to organize call numbers and alphabetize.
Lesson 13: People love to teach, but hate to learn. Being taught information you feel you already know inspires feelings of indignation, but teaching people about things, even if they claim to already know them, makes you feel productive and useful. If you feel like you already know something, sitting and listening may feel like a waste of time, but you never know when you might learn that a space counts as a letter.
But no classes today, just work. I had a rather redundant feeling lesson on library organization and shelving order. My official supervisor, after more than a week of me working there, taught me how to organize call numbers and alphabetize.
Lesson 13: People love to teach, but hate to learn. Being taught information you feel you already know inspires feelings of indignation, but teaching people about things, even if they claim to already know them, makes you feel productive and useful. If you feel like you already know something, sitting and listening may feel like a waste of time, but you never know when you might learn that a space counts as a letter.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Day 4: Classes? We no need no stinkin' classes!
Off-center day of classes! My class that's normally Wednesday was actually today (a Friday?) because next Wednesday the professor's actually in Greece, so we need to get started so as not to fall behind. Confusing. Following that trend, my lessons today were all about confusion.
Lesson 5) People are generally uninterested in libraries and as a result seem to think they are organized by magic. They are also incapable of understanding interchangeable use of the terms "bookshelves" and "stacks" without a whole song and dance.
Bonus unnumbered lesson for non-library people: you know bookshelves. Bookselves are shelves for books, you've seen them in the library and you probably have at least one in your house, even if you don't use it for books. Point of interest though, when we have bookshelves in the library, we also tend to call them "the stacks". I don't want you to be confused when we refer to "that stack over there". We aren't talking about a pile of books, that's just what we call the shelves. Same thing when we refer to entries, we're talking about catalogue entries, usually on the computer, not entrances.
I feel that sometimes we can be confusing without meaning to. Just remember that we are professionals, experts if you will. Just like I wouldn't necessarily understand if you started talking about things from your field with the terms you use with your colleagues, we will use our terms when talking with you because that's how we speak when we're in the library, and sometimes we forget that we're not just talking to another colleague. So please accept my apologies for this in advance.
Lesson 5) People are generally uninterested in libraries and as a result seem to think they are organized by magic. They are also incapable of understanding interchangeable use of the terms "bookshelves" and "stacks" without a whole song and dance.
Bonus unnumbered lesson for non-library people: you know bookshelves. Bookselves are shelves for books, you've seen them in the library and you probably have at least one in your house, even if you don't use it for books. Point of interest though, when we have bookshelves in the library, we also tend to call them "the stacks". I don't want you to be confused when we refer to "that stack over there". We aren't talking about a pile of books, that's just what we call the shelves. Same thing when we refer to entries, we're talking about catalogue entries, usually on the computer, not entrances.
I feel that sometimes we can be confusing without meaning to. Just remember that we are professionals, experts if you will. Just like I wouldn't necessarily understand if you started talking about things from your field with the terms you use with your colleagues, we will use our terms when talking with you because that's how we speak when we're in the library, and sometimes we forget that we're not just talking to another colleague. So please accept my apologies for this in advance.
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