梁董的吧台後

找到了這篇，也是老師在學分班上推介的文章，本想找看看，看能不能得到一些對圖書館學本質和未來有些想法，結果一看…Gi~~它的英文(至少是前半部)，可真是有水準的英文…但是，如果是經典的話，還是得看下去，我知道會翻得有些問題，會有很多辭不達意，不過，非常希望有人能指教錯誤的地方，可以讓它可被更多人閱讀，讓圖書館員能理解/思考我們的專業/未來在哪? 這篇蠻長的，所以會分批慢慢翻…

最近對岸也很常在討論圖書館學精神，到底我們的專業/核心在哪?
有的話，我們有內化多少?……

Professionalism and the future of librarianship

偉大的阿根廷作家波赫士 寫了個叫”巴比倫圖書館”故事，描述一個壯麗的，永恆的圖書館，它的書架上有所有能被二十個字母所拚出的符號的組合。換句話說，所有語文的資料都會被收錄。所有東西有：未來每分鐘詳盡的資料，大天使長的傳記，詳實的圖書館目錄，數以千計的錯誤目錄，証明這些錯誤的目錄的論點，Basildes的諾斯替基督教派(梁董按：對基督教而言是種異端教派)，對福音的評論(這兒該是指正統教派)，對福音評論的評論，關於死亡的真實故事，以各種語言翻譯的所有書，每本書在所有書內的插寫評論。

THE GREAT ARGENTINIAN WRITER JORGE LUIS BORGES (1964)wrote a story called "The Library of Babel" describing a magnificent, endless library:

[I]ts shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols .... In other words, all that it is given to express, in all languages. Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogue of the library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books. (p. 54)

這種正確資訊和錯誤資訊的大雜燴迷惑了波赫士的圖書館員。雖然每位圖書館員都該在一些大型圖書館的六角形房間裡能自主其事，多數人還是直覺的發現圖書館容納所有合適的書且辯白著他們這些個人的行為。. “這些朝聖者”他說”在狹隘的走廊上爭論，說著黑暗的詛咒，互相牽絆在神學的書梯上，把這些騙人的書丟在階梯的通風井裡” 而其它人成為官方的蒐尋者 ”我曾看過他們”他說”在他們工作時的演出:他們因為他們的旅程而累壞，他們談著個壞掉的書梯，差點害他們喪了命…有時他們拿起最近的一冊，並且匆匆的翻了一下，找著不好的字眼。明顯的，沒有人期待會找到任何的東西”正如其它人所了解的，在波赫士的文字裡” 在六角型房的一些書架上，必有一本書，它是其它所有書的概要:一些館員讀了它，他就如神一般了。”

This strange stew of information and disinformation bewitches Borges's (1964) librarians. Although each librarian was supposedly in charge of a few of the great library's hexagonal rooms, many reacted to the discovery that the library contained all possible books by rushing off to find those special works that would vindicate their personal actions. "These pilgrims," he says, "disputed in the narrow corridors, proferred dark curses, strangled each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts..." (p. 55). Others became official searchers. "I have seen them," he says, "in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway that almost killed them... sometimes they pick up the nearest volume and leaf through it, looking for infamous words. Obviously no one expects to discover anything" (p. 55). Still others realized that, in Borges's (1964) words, "on some shelf in some hexagon.., there must exist a book which is the formula and compendium of all the rest: some librarian has gone through it and he is analogous to a god" (p. 56).

波赫士的寓言將圖書館學以文字詮釋的很貼切，它確實將秩序/無秩序，資訊/非資訊，貧困/過量之間的圖書館學在變換的處境表現出來。我們目前面對的龐大資料量讓許多的圖書館員瘋狂的去追逐資料的科技。有些已從他們的錯誤中學到補救之道。有些人還是安靜的夢想著在某處的某圖書館員能完全的理解這些。

Borges's parable serves well as a text for librarianship today, for it is indeed perpetually perched between order and disorder, between information and disinformation, between poverty and surfeit. The vastness of our current information possibilities has many librarians madly pursuing the technologies of data. Others have learned to their detriment the price of panaceas. Still others quietly dream of the librarian somewhere who understands it all.

社會學學者還沒有趕上充滿活動的當代圖書館學。如果一個人閱讀由社會學家所寫對圖書館員的分析的話，他們大都將焦點對在嚴肅(還有，明而可顯的，無意義的)圖書館員到底是不是專業的問題上。社會學教科書上把圖書館學稱為一個半專業。教科書把專業定義為由專家組成組成體，他們應用特別的秘奧知識在特別的情況下。專業有其教育體系，並一起參與如考試和其它正式評鑑。他們對擁有和實行某些倫理守則的行為有其信念。他們同樣認為他們的服務是要收費的，不論結果是成功或失敗。在這種情況下，專業常常是獨立的開業者，這種模式在法律、醫學上很明顯。更確切地說，曾是在法律、醫學上很明顯，就這些印象來說-服務收費，內部服膺的守則，獨立的作業—法律和醫學內正在快速消失。

The sociology of professions has yet to catch up with the wildly dynamic world of contemporary librarianship. If one reads the analyses of librarians written by sociologists, most of them focus on the venerable (and, as shall be shown, meaningless) question of whether librarianship really is a profession. Textbook sociology calls librarianship a semi-profession. The textbooks define a full profession as an organized body of experts who apply some particular form of esoteric knowledge to particular cases. Full professions have systems of instruction and training together with entry by examination and other formal prerequisites. They are believed to possess and enforce some kind of code of ethics or rules of behavior. They are also thought to rely on fees for services, fees which are due whether the result is success or failure. Full professionals in this sense are usually independent, freestanding practitioners. Obviously the models for this conception are law and medicine. Or rather, were law and medicine, for this image--fee for service, internally enforced codes, independent practice--is fast disappearing from law and medicine today.

在教科書的觀點裡，半專業和專業的不同是在他們是在官僚體系下的員工，通常缺少終身的事業，並不用使用如醫學或法律那種奧秘的知識--至少在目前社會學家的眼裡是這樣子。舉個例子來弄清楚的話，這種觀念上專業/半專業上的差異就如男性和女性上能做多少事的不同吧。

In this textbook view, semi-professions differ from the full professions in that their members are bureaucratically employed, often lack lifetime careers, and do not use, in the eyes of certain sociologists at least, knowledge as esoteric as that of law or medicine. The major semi-professions are social work, teaching, nursing, and librarianship. As the examples make clear, the conceptual difference between profession and semi-profession probably has more to do with the difference between men and women than with anything else.

區分專業和半專業的社會學家並沒有就這種二分法而被說服。根據專業化過程的理論，半專業只需去等。專業化過程曾是如手扶梯般的無可避免的。第一先有學校，然後有個組織，再來是考試、再來執照制，再來出現守則，突然，這職業就到達了它的終點站—專業，就像律師醫師一樣。就算是今天，每次人們用到專業化過程這個字時，他們腦裡出來的印象就是一個穩字前進的手扶梯，帶著他們和他們的職業達到更高的層次。當他們到了，將會有人們敬重他們的專業思想。

The sociologists who divided full professions and semi-professions were not persuaded that the dichotomy would last forever. According to the theory of professionalization, semi-professions had only to wait. Professionalization was as inevitable as an escalator. First there came a school, then an association, then examinations, then licensing, then an ethics code, and suddenly the occupation had arrived at its destination--a full profession, just like the lawyers and doctors. Even today, every time people use the word "professionalization," the image they have in mind is an escalator steadily bearing themselves and their occupations toward a higher status. When they arrive, the would-be professionals think people will respect them and their judgment.

但這個圖書館員所在的電扶梯不知為何卻從來沒有到達過。過了一個世圖書館學似乎與杜威時代相比並沒有靠目標近些。有個簡單的原因。根本沒有這個電扶梯。專業全是存在於同一個水平上。為了確定，職業常常去創造考試、証照、協會和倫理守則，當遇新的知識成為它工作的生態，當其它職業也參與了其工作的一部份時，當首要工作的需求逐步的改變時，所有存在於世上的所有証照均不能保護一個職業。職業(如圖書館學或是其它)和其工作是取決於與工作的關係。當我們注意在”專業化過程時”我們若要將這工作架構為一個”真正”的專業時，它總是會停滯了它在歷史上進行的規跡。

But the escalator on which librarians are perched has somehow never arrived. After a century, librarianship seems no nearer to its goal than in the Dewey days. There is a simple reason for that. There is no escalator. The professions all exist on one level. To be sure, occupations often create examinations, licensing, associations, and ethics codes. But all the licensing in the world does not protect an occupation when new knowledge transforms the nature of its work, when other occupations take parts of its work away, when the capital requirements of its work gradually force it to be organized in different ways. What really matters about an occupation--librarianship or any other--is its relation to the work that it does. When we focus on "professionalization," we take that work for granted as if achieving the structural shape of a "real" profession would somehow stop the history of work in its tracks. But one has only to think of medicine today to see at once that even this most professional of professions looks a great deal different today than it did thirty or forty years ago. In the , most doctors are now salaried workers in bureaucracies. Their fees are set by insurance companies and governments. They are disciplined more by malpractice lawyers than by their own disciplinary boards. They still make a lot of money--if that is one's indicator of professionhood--but that too will change soon.

待續…