My first learning mission

"Don’t fight culture (If people cook by stirring their stews, they’re not
going to use a solar oven, no matter what you do to market it. Make
them a better stove instead.)"

One of the goals of librarians and archivists is to preserve the historical record of the world. There are, of course, many ways this can be accomplished. We see the Google Book Project, with its over-arching goal of knowledge capture and sharing. Project Gutenberg attempts the same thing, but on a smaller, more specified scale: older, public-domain doc**ents. Archives, of course, are the ultimate in records-keeping: climate-controlled, curated, cataloged items of note.

All of these concepts, however, only really apply to a Western, paper-based system. While writing is a wonderful thing, it cannot be the only thing. What is needed most is a culturally-sensitive system for saving, classifying, and storing information. The last two are largely underway -- RDA (Resource Description and Access) is the new standard for classification and has a large digital section, and the internet, or digital means in general, will certainly be the best method of storing information. How to collect it, however?

Well, up 'til now, we've had to rely on Anthropologists for primary, story-based or spoken-word cultural knowledge. They're good at it, becoming non-intrusive, acclimating themselves to a culture, keeping an open mind, and hopefully recording and publishing on a cultural topic. The problem, though, is a massive exodus to to cities in developing countries. Much like the Industrial Revolution affected the West, industrialization is destroying rural, folk knowledge and culture like never before.

What we need, then, is a new style of industrial design. A way to take the benefits of industry -- job security, safety of cities, etc. -- and adapt it to a rural or nomadic lifestyle. We talk often about adapting tech or sharing tech with first-world countries. We need to help them, but in a way that preserves those cultures. A laptop for every child is unrealistic if the society demands everything you own be able to fit in a small pack because they are nomadic and travel great distances. Electronics that rely on batteries are useless in rural areas. We need small, hardy, lightweight devices -- for a start! Recording is a must, instead of spoken-word. Otherwise we undermine the very nature of a storytelling culture.

That's just an example, of course. To me, as a librarian, I feel that the greatest threat my profession poses is a normalization. We wish to impose rules -- largely Western ones -- on every piece of information we handle. Better might be to take into account the culture from which the item comes. Even better would be to foster that culture's own system for knowledge management.