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final thoughts on the New Yorker



I too have enjoyed the NEW YORKER thread of discussion on this list, but
it has reminded me as well of this list's limitations and the profession's
ignoring of its own knowledge base.  The thread started with someone
having read an article - this is an exception since most often discussions
commence with someone posing a practical question with no reference to or
interest in the extant professional literature.  There were some in the
discussion (most notably Ed Southern referring to Tanselle's writings) who
made references to the professional literature.  But, as usual, the
discussion thread went on and on with people commenting on what they do or
what others do, when, at the least, Baker's article (as, indeed, his
writings on catalog discards did) raised conceptual or theoretical
approaches to what archivists and librarians do - he asked the BIG
questions.  The reason I bring this up is that I went back and read my own
"Analytical Bibliography and the Modern Archivist: A Commentary on
Similarities, Differences, and Prospects for Cooperation," chapter twelve
in my 1990 AMERICAN ARCHIVAL ANALYSIS, in which I did among other things
actually quoted Tanselle but, and more importantly, wrote about how little
archivists seemed to be aware of the literature written by rare book
specialists like Tanselle.  I am not bringing this up to complain that no
one read my essay, but it consistently worries me that the depth of
passion and concern for so many issues like what we have discussed in this
thread (and the recent PATRIOT thread) occurs with little or no reference
to a professional body of knowledge.  Of all the lists I am on, it is this
one that consistently ignores its own literature.

Richard J. Cox
Professor
Department of Library and Information Sciences
School of Information Sciences
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Voice:  412-624-3245
FAX:    412-648-7001
e-mail: rcox@mail.sis.pitt.edu
homepage: http://www.lis.pitt.edu/~rjc

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