theorywatch

Interesting that I didn’t come across Perrow’s piece “On Not Using Libraries” while I was at Syracuse, though I certainly read much of his other work, especially his books on Complex Organizations and Normal Accidents. I think this is probably explained by the fact that the libraries article appeared in an obscure conference-related journal back in 1989, when there was no Web to pick up these pieces (pun intended, as I found the reference to the article on the JESSE listserv just now, thanks to a provocative poster in the Netherlands, and I was easily able to find the article itself online).

His point is even more pointed today, obviously. If I were to read everything that interested me on a professional level, I would be spending my whole life in my virtual library here. (And with no personal or pleasure reading at all!)

So the idea of “hiding” things from the people who would otherwise be obsessed by them is a provocative one: it’s so “anti-library” that it grates on me, and yet it makes a great deal of sense….