Thinking about and Organizing Information

             When I finished reading Buckland’s “Information as a Thing,”  I really only had one thought: What was the point of that article?  In my opinion the article did nothing but state the obvious (information is meant to be informative, anything can be viewed as information, information is situational, copies of information are never as good as the original).  I didn’t disagree with anything in the article, but moreover thought: why does this need to be stated?  In fact, I feel like Buckland even got at that point himself when he said: “If anything is, or might be, informative, then everything is, or might well be, informational.  Calling something information does little or nothing to define it.   If everything is information, then being information is nothing special.”  Then why write an article about it??  Was the purpose of the article to prove that information is nothing special?  From the abstract at the beginning, I do not think that is Buckland’s main point; however, when I read this paragraph on the sixth page, a large part of me wanted to put the article down and not pick it up.  Even the summary is ambiguous and does not offer the reader too much new information.

                Opposed to the previous article, I found Olson’s “The Power to Name: Representation in Library Catalogs” to be surprisingly interesting and informative.  I am currently taking LIS 551: Organization of Information and found the first portion of the article very similar to class.  These topics may be boring or hard to understand to some, but  being in that class helped me understand the differences between Cutter’s classification, Library of Congress Subject Headings, and the Dewey Decimal System.  (Although I admit, if I was not in 551, this article would have been overwhelming, confusing, hard to follow and most likely unenjoyable to read).  I thought that the article was just going to describe these different methods of classification, and give an objective view of all of them by discussing positives and negatives with each system.   Imagine my surprise when all of a sudden a feminist and culturalist viewpoint comes forth in the article.  I thought the examples given were perfect examples of the problems that can happen with classification (over generalizations, random classifications, important facets of the works being left out).  Even more interesting to read, was Olson’s interpretation of potential solutions to these organizational issues.  In 551 we often discuss the oddities (yet norms) of classification systems.  Olson’s closing remarks claim that although it would be time consuming and monetarily costly- a change in classification systems needs to be made to address issues of inequality.   It is a known fact that libraries are designed to provide information to the patrons, and catalogs should be constructed for the “convenience of the public it serves.”  However, I feel like this is easier said than done.  What is convenient to one, is not necessarily convenient to another… which I suppose leads back to the general categorization, and the problems that come along with it.