The World Wide Web & the Five Laws of Library Science

1. Books are for Use
2. Every Person His or Her Book
3.  Every Book Its Reader
4. Save the Time of the Reader
5.  A Library is a Growing Organism
           S. R. Ranganathan, The Five Laws of Library Science, 1933
     The founder of library science was S.R. Ranganathan.  He set forth the foundation upon which library service--information service--is provided.   His five principles--the Five Laws of Library Science--listed above, lead me to ask about connections between library service, and the world wide web.  Tim  Berners-Lee spearheaded the development of the World Wide Web.
     Books are not expendable resources, simply by virtue of the fact that they may be converted into a digital format.  The defense of that conviction is worthy of a separate writing.
     Currently, I will look to Ranganathan to assess how we are using the information available on the World Wide Web.  If we are to use information deliberately, thoughtfully, and responsibly, then we need to understand some basic facts.  The Internet is the structure within which information may be formated and re-presented.  The World Wide Web is the content of the data--the substance of the data.  Tim Berners-Lee spearheaded an effort to develop the Web.
     Would S.R. Ranganathan and Tim Berners-Lee be at a meeting of the minds regarding information?        
      Let us take Ranganathan's laws one by one.  I will offer a parallel pondering as a way to examine the connections between Ranganathan and Berners-Lee's developments. I made Ranganathan's laws gender inclusive.
     First, books are for use.  Patty's Parallel Pondering:  The World Wide Web is designed for use.
Is the World Wide Web free of charge to users, as Berners-Lee envisioned?
     Second, every reader his/her book.  Patty's Parallel Pondering:  Every World Wide Web surfer his/her website.
     Do search engines identify clear search strategies that enable individuals to locate websites that are relevant to their wants, and needs?  Do we, as producers of websites provide effective search labels or tags to direct individuals to relevant information?
     Third, every book his/[her] reader.  Patty's Proposed Pondering:  Every website his/her user.
     Do we, as producers of online content know how to promote our information where it will be found readily?  Are we aware of resources that may help individuals in searching for our information?  Do we utilize those resources?
     Fourth, save the time of the reader.  Patty's Proposed Pondering:  Save the time of the web surfer.

     Is the overall structure of the Internet conducive to intuitive use of information?  Are specific websites designed in such a way as to direct individuals to the information they want and need?
     Fifth, a library is a growing organism.  Patty's Proposed Pondering:  The World Wide Web is a growing organism.
     With the proliferation of websites, and second generation online information--social media--it would be laughable to question the sheer growth of  the organism.  It is a quite different matter to question the quality of the growing World Wide Web.  Each of us, as individuals who use the web, are responsible participants in guiding the quality of the Web.  What consideration do we give to the veracity of the information we publish on the World Wide Web?  What deliberation do we give to postings we make to blogs, web sites, and social media, to name a few?

A Cherished Life

For the most part--and you can believe this or not as you choose--I consider my life unusually privileged.  How many people get to adapt themselves deliberately to their circumstances?  How many get to adopt a pace that suits them--or even have a chance to puzzle what that pace might be?  How many get to devote themselves fully to the pursuits that most delight them:  in my case, observing, reflecting, conversing, writing?  How many cherish what little they have on any given day, in the full knowledge that on some tomorrow it inevitable will be lost?
                                Nancy Mairs, Waist-High in the World, p. 38
     Cherishing the unexpected is a true gift.  A colleague died this week at a very young age.  Her poignant funeral amplified how wonderful it has been--how wonderful it is--to be allowed to craft a life on my own terms.  I am not free of boundaries, or limits, but, I am free of artificially-imposed boundaries and limits.  My body--my geography of space--sets boundaries.  But, no longer am I bound by corporate etiquette, or corporate pressures.  Beyond a number of individuals, I do not think about where I worked for 24 years.
    Since I have stopped working in the 9-to-5 work world, I have been given new opportunities.  I followed the best advice given to me--get up every day at the same time, and get dressed as though you were going to a job at a set time.  I set no alarm.  My bladder takes care of that.  I love words, crosswords, current events, and world affairs, as well as reading, researching, writing, and reflecting.  Encouraged by friends, and family, I go to sleep each night knowing I am living by my lifelong passions.
     I do not impose anxiety on myself by setting unrealistic goals.  As active a volunteer as was my late colleague, her neighbor said that her vacation was doing nothing.  She understood the importance of playing to living fully.  Whereas many people try to fill the hours of their day meeting quotas, she understood that her work time was more productive--more enjoyable--by her rich playing, and re-creation.
     My colleague faced a ravaging illness.  Yet, she navigated it on her own terms.  Not perfectly, but, its imperfections are hers alone to know.  It is for us to know that her navigation was not worthy of heroic admiration, rather, it was her gift for us to appreciate.  I abhor saying that there are always people who are less fortunate than I am.  I have no intent to elevate my life experiences in the context of others.  Quite to the contrary.  My colleague touched deeply the individuals who helped her to navigate her dying days.  She knew she was dying--her death was imminent.  So, she surrounded herself with people who would celebrate her with stories, laughter, and beautiful poetry.
     Nancy Mairs, and my colleagues remind me how fortunate I feel--not by their dictate, but, by my own keen ear.  I work no longer, though, normally, my age prescribes it.  Yet, my "work" is my life's work--crafting my time and surroundings with what brings the most joy.  Reading, researching, reflection, and writing.  A cherished living is not free of challenge.  Cherished living must not atrophy my mind or my spirit.  Atrophying of my body parts tempts my mind, and my spirit to be obedient followers.
     My colleague allowed my embrace with old "partners in crime" from whom my body dictated my abrupt departure.  We may or may not gather again as a group.  Perhaps at the funeral of another colleague.  Yet, yesterday, each of us were able to say to one another, "Life is better now.  Despite the abrupt, painful circumstances surrounding our partings, life is better now."

Entombed Body, Free Spirit

I imbibe in the wallowing wine,
Not of my taste, she is bitter.
I must wash away my sorrow,
Swallow the sadness that darkens my spirit.

A sour, bitter woman
I must not become.
A woman who poisons others with my dour view, I cannot become.

Awaken me from my sorrowful, soured, saddened slumber.
Awaken me to all that I will do yet in my life.
Awaken me to all that I will know yet in my life.

I cannot succumb.
I must not become.
Tempting though it may be,
I cannot enlist in the battle of antagonistic righteousness.

Hard though it may be,
My needs I must share.
Yet, how?
When?

Entombed body,
Give me room to sit.
Give me space to stand,
Entombed body.

Free spirits,
Together may we sit,
Together may we stand,
Free spirits.
                                     Undated, before 2008.
                                     Most cleansing of all therapy is writing.
                                     No burden is too heavy--no pain                                                    too intense for the healing--the freedom--                                      writing provides.
                                     I treasure her gift.

Mature Healing

     Nancy Mairs is an author, a Catholic, an individual with a wheelchair, who is affected by multiple sclerosis.  I was drawn to her writing when I had a voracious appetite to understand my own disabilities--cerebral palsy, and epilepsy.  There is a spirituality of the human body, which is central to how I live the spirituality of The Body of Christ.  It is amazing, it is not a mechanical ritual, nor an esoteric body of knowledge to be studied.
   I gravitate toward Nancy Mairs' writing from a new dimension.  Intellectually, I know she may not telegraph to me--warn me--of the pitfalls I may face, or how to navigate a new chapter in my life--living with the use of a wheelchair.  Yet, the anxious child in me is staying up late to cram for her final exam in living with a wheelchair.  What leads me to think that I will be protected from making mistakes using my wheelchair?  After making mistakes at work, a friend reminded me, "You are not PERFECT Patty, you are human!"
     Yet, news that I should receive my wheelchair within a week or so has accelerated my anticipation.  It is the night before Christmas, and I am waiting for my presents to arrive--I am waiting to open my present.  What is it that Nancy Mairs can tell me that will satisfy me?  I am not married, nor am I a mother, or an individual with multiple sclerosis.  I do not use the word "cripple" to describe the fact that I have cerebral palsy, and epilepsy.  Although, I do understand the feelings that might lead me to change my ways.  Yet, I am not to that point yet.  I do not aspire to using that word in reference to myself.  Nancy Mairs has opened me to the need to be more receptive to the words that I use in describing my cerebral palsy, and epilepsy, and now, my osteoarthitis.  Through her openness, Nancy has encouraged me to be more reflective about such adjectives.
     The return of my voracious appetite for Nancy Mairs, and similar writers, is a sign that I am healing.  My right ankle might be on her last leg, although she has been relieved of her painful bone spurs.  Yet, I am healing.  I am not healing toward a past version of myself--a version with more physical flexibility.  No, that is a false sense of healing.  Mature healing is not movement toward a perfect, god-like way of living.  No.  I have not been granted supernatural--infallible--powers that elevate me from daily struggles.  No.  Mature healing, if I choose to embrace it, calls me to seek accommodation to what I may no longer do.
     During a home evaluation, in which I tried out a wheelchair to see if it would work in my own home, I told the medical vendor that I had three questions to which I needed answers.  When he tried to evade my questions, I made myself quite clear.  First, I needed to know, "what can I do today with this wheelchair?"  Secondly, "with practice, what will I be able to do with this wheelchair?"  Third, "what will I not be able to do--what will I need to ask help in accomplishing when using my wheelchair?"  He was afraid of his answers to my questions.  I was forthright.  "I may not like your answers, but, I need to ask the questions--I need answers, so that I may live as fully as is possible."
     I am anxious.  I want to get started in my quest for answers.  As much as I may want the vendor, or someone else to answer my questions, no one may answer the questions for me.  I have forgotten the willful child, who unwittingly outfoxed the physical therapists.  When given tasks designed to get me to use my left and my right hands, I found a way to accomplish the tasks without using my right hand, which was affected by cerebral palsy.  I was too young to have plotted such rebellion.  I was just willful.  Much has changed, but, I think that willful soul is still resident in me, below my ankle foot orthotic, perhaps?

Grieving A Body

For years after I began to have symptoms of MS, I used language to avoid owning them:  "The left hand doesn't work anymore," I said.  "There's a blurred spot in the right eye."  In distancing myself from my ravaged central nervous system, I kept grief at bay, but I also banished any possibility of self-love.  Only gradually have I schooled myself to speak of "my" hands, "my" eyes, thereby taking responsibility for them, though loving them ordinarily remains beyond me.
                           Waist-High in the World, Nancy Mairs, p. 43
     I understand what Nancy Mairs is describing.  She did not claim to be a spokesperson for all disabled individuals.  Permit me to refer to Nancy Mairs by her first name.  She invites her readers to share intimate details of her life, in the hopes of nurturing understanding by other individuals.  I accept her invitation.  I hope you will accompany me.  Nancy provides a starting point from which to reflect on the "ravaged central nervous system."
     I began to notice symptoms of osteoarthritis ten years ago.  Osteorthritis and cerebral palsy joined forces to accelerate my aging process.  My approach for my cerebral-palsied right hand, and my unaffected left hand has been to personify their relationship to me, and with one another through writing.  When I began to notice that my right hand depended inordinately on my left hand, I conceived of a conversational eavesdropping between my affected body parts.  For a lifetime, I have been called to respond to questions regarding my disabilities.  Early on, it became clear that the more open I could be about my body--about my disabilities--the deeper my relationships with other people would be.  Eavesdropping is frowned upon socially, however, it seemed that writing--writing a dialogue between body parts--could be an effective vehicle to transport questions into answers and understanding.
    I am intrigued by Nancy's comments about grieving, "In distancing myself from my ravaged central nervous system, I kept grief at bay, but I also banished any possibility of self-love."  I think I have taken a different approach than she describes.  Neither one is better than the other.  When I was fitted for my first ankle-foot-orthotic, or leg brace, I knew that I would face a psychological adjustment.  I talked about my brace--about my fears--with my coworkers.  In so doing, I invited them in for two purposes.  Quite selfishly, I needed their help to adjust to the new appendage to my body.  But, I hoped that they could understand what they had within themselves--what their "braces" were--that joined us.
     "Ravaged central nervous system," is a marvelous description.  I am not thrilled by the fact that my right ankle is on her last leg.  I am not thrilled by the fact that I understand the meaning of "homebound."   I have joked that, as I have been trying to secure a wheelchair, I have forgotten what it is that I am trying to get out to do.  Yet, it is not a joke.  It is true.  It is pathetic.  I am driven to distance myself from the pathetic aspect of me--that pathetic aspect.