Me, Librarian - You, Computer Scientist

So here's the sequence of events leading up to what I've been thinking about today. I left one job last week for another, and the lovely librarians there gave me the perfect parting gifts - a tote bag reading "Librarian: the Original Search Engine" (in the Google font) and the movie Desk Set. Then today, working my way through the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I've seen the second and third seasons, and am now getting back to my roots), I watched the episode "I Robot - You Jane." I also attended the first meeting of one of the classes I'm taking this semester - Database Management. Which all adds up to thinking about this conversation that's been going on for many years, about computers/the Internet and libraries - a conversation that's often adversarial. Desk Set was made in 1957 with the premise that computers are going to be smarter than humans, and therefore the librarian and the printed page will soon be obsolete. Well...clearly, that hasn't really happened.

The Buffy episode, made forty years later, sets this up through a series of antagonistic conversations between Giles (the stereotypically computer-phobic, old-fashioned librarian) and Jenny Calendar (the stereotypical computer teacher who thinks technology is the answer to everything). Jenny sees Giles as a snob who wants to withhold information, keep it locked up and controlled - she thinks information should be free-flowing rather than compartmentalized. She points out, "You know, the last two years, more e-mail was sent than
regular mail. More digitized information went across phone lines than conversations." (Which Giles regards with "genuine horror.") Giles, for his part, has this to say about Ms. Calendar's lab (reproduced with all its British hesitation from IMDB):

Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.

Of course, anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I'm going to grant truth to both sides of this so-called conflict. The digital revolution can only go so far - we simply cannot spend our entire lives looking at screens. Both the serendipitous and fecund Internet, and the organized and sensory world of offline information, are important. I hear that even Giles moves from date due cards to a scanner in a later season.

In other brief news, the new job isn't that only thing that's new around here. I moved back to the dorm, I have a new operating system (I got an extremely gently used Mac), and of course, it's a new semester. Transition has sort of become my normal state of being for the last two years, so its symbolic sheen has sort of worn off. I'm hunkering down rather than reaching for self-transformation. The closest thing I've got to a central talisman right now is my READ poster with Alan Rickman on it. When I see it, I don't think about Snape or even Colonel Brandon. I see him smiling in this encouraging way, like an uncle or a professor, and if I'm mired in details, I can remind myself that each day adds itself onto the curve of meaningful work and life. Yes, I get all that from that poster - I guess that's why it's a symbol. And that's the power of Alan Rickman.