Big W and little w
Interesting discussion last night in the 5033 seminar about the so-called “DIKW hierarchy” as one information model that we could possibly place in the “Entity/Intangible” cell of Michael Buckland’s “Information As” matrix, which led to my rambling on about the Arete Initiative, which I’ve blogged about earlier, and also to some useful exchanges about the nature of “wisdom” itself (in the sense both of big-W Wisdom and of little-w wisdom: thanks, Ruth and Darlene!)
And it occurred to me that although I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a number of rather brilliant people, there’s only one person whom I’ve ever encountered whom I believe could truly be “classified” as W/wise in both senses:
Professor emerita Antje Lemke, who taught “the humanities” to any number of LIS students at Syracuse not only through her gentle learning and fascinating conversation but through her life. I would say that dear Antje is both my platonic and my pragmatic ideal of a “librarian”…. and perhaps that’s why I get so excited about welcoming people into her profession!
