Back in library school, on the first day of a required cataloguing class, the professor did introductory rounds with the students, asking about our library background and our interest in cataloguing. Everyone ahead of me affirmed some natural affinity for a precise, imposed order, from arranging all their books at home in alphabetical order to creating indexes of their CD collections. When it came to my turn, I said that I had an abiding appreciaton of chaos. An uncomfortable silence ensued.

At this year’s Internet Librarian Conference, I am hearing an energized embrace of both sides of the equation. There is a lot of talk about tagging and folksonomies, so it was refreshing to hear Jessamyn West say that she’s not about to throw out traditional cataloging structures in favor of the anarchy of folksonomies. There’s room for both. In fact, they work in concordance by providing the structural backbone for presenting information, but permeated with the language by which users most naturally access information.

It reminds me of something I read about the tension between architectural design and the habitation of the designed structure by real people. The architect applies theories of form and aesthetics, but the people who use the building add life to it and inevitably layer their own intentions on the original design. It is the people/users who have the last word.

There has been so much to absorb at this conference that my mental sponge is saturated. This sensation is the reason why we created a forum on WebJunction for post-conference de-stress. I’ll be dribbling out ideas there over the next few weeks –all the new cool stuff I learned and want to share with my immediate online community.