The Evolving Research Library:
A Memetic View
by John Kupersmith
in Susan Lee, ed.,
The New Library Legacy: Essays in Honor of Richard De Gennaro
(Munich: K.G. Saur Verlag, 1998), pp. 34-43.
© 1996 John Kupersmith -- All rights reserved
ABSTRACT
In the past four decades, with the introduction of new technologies
into research libraries, there has been a profound shift in the
commonly accepted idea of what a library can and should be, and
what librarians can and should do.
The concept of memetics is a useful tool for understanding these changes.
This theory holds that ideas, in effect, have a life of their own. A "meme" tends to survive and proliferate if it contributes to the fitness of the individual and the group, if it proves to be reliable, if it is easily learned and transmitted, and if it encourages its "carriers" to behave in self-reinforcing ways.
In this sense, the meme of the research library has undergone a
number of fundamental changes since the 1960s,
changes which have become widely institutionalized. These
include transitions in the perceived business of libraries, in
the way libraries do business, and in the role of staff and
their relationship to users. With the growth of the Internet
and the proliferation of distributed information systems, new
memes are emerging to compete with that of the research
library. The question of what will emerge from this
competition hinges not only on technology and economics, but
also on people's perceptions and values regarding these
functions and institutions.
RELATED LINKS
Memetics
- Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
- Memetics publications on the web (extensive collection)
- Memetics Page of Francis Heylighen (part of the Principia Cybernetica Web)
- Memetics Page of Anders Sandberg (resource list)
- Memetics Page of Cosma Rohilla Shalizi (cites William James & other precursors of Dawkins)
- Memetics Page of Hans Cees Speel ("Some pointers and a short introduction to memetics")
- Memetics Page of Marius Watz
- alt.memetics FAQ: Sources of Infection (resource list).
- David Brin, The New Meme
- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene and Viruses of the Mind
- Mike Godwin, Meme, Counter-Meme, Wired (Issue 2.10, October 1994)
- Glenn Grant, Memes: Introduction and Memetic Lexicon
- H. Keith Henson, Memes, Meta-Memes, and Politics
- Francis Heylighen, Memetic Selection Criteria
- Joshua S. Lateiner, Of Man, Mind and Machine: Meme-Based Models of Mind and the Possibility for Consciousness in Alternate Media
- Elan Moritz, Memetic Science: I - General Introduction
- Elan Moritz, MetaSystem Transitions, Memes, and Cybernetic Immortality
- Heath Michael Rezabek, Autologue: Interdisciplinary Dialogue within the Global Network Environment
- J.Peter Vajk, Memetics: The Nascent Science of Ideas and Their Transmission
- Newsgroup: alt.memetics
Libraries
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