Anne Slaughter rephrases Ranganathan to inspire her work as the Virtual Services Librarian of the Oak Park Public Library.
2 thoughts on “The Library Website is a Growing Organism”
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Anne Slaughter rephrases Ranganathan to inspire her work as the Virtual Services Librarian of the Oak Park Public Library.
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I find it interesting that you changed Slaughter’s straight reprise of Ranganathan’s “The Library is a growing organism” to “the Library website is….” in your post title.
I actually find the ranganathan original quoted in her original to still be the more provocative and powerful statement, and especially in Slaughter’s new context to make the point that the library website is an integral part of “The Library”.
The library as a growing organism grows to include a website as an integral part. The library as a growing organism must continue to grow it’s website along with the rest of itself, and indeed to constantly grow the way the website integrates with and interacts wtih the rest of the library ‘organism’ whole (and vice versa). You could say that the library website is an organ of the growing library organism. (Okay, biological organisms don’t usually grow NEW organs, so the metaphore ain’t airtight).
Yes, I debated that change because, overall, I like the original statement better too. It certainly is more inclusive.
I think it still works with the web specific content inserted and I wanted to emphasize that library websites shouldn’t be left to rot. Which clearly we agree on.