John Miedema

One of the battle cries of the new librarianship is that information does not require a location. In the past, information was located in books, and books had a precise location on a shelf, identified by a call number. Digital information seems to defy that logic. XML allows format to be variable. Tagging allows for information to have an indefinite number of access points. The server on which digital information exists can be changed in a moment without any impact on the user. Is location irrelevant?

One of the themes that the Slow Movement brings to reading is the importance of locality. Personally, I think this is the most interesting theme brought forward by my writing on slow reading. There are two senses of locality with regard to information, both ultimately related to context. The first sense refers to its material context, where the writer comes from and, if applicable, where a story is set. We often pay more attention to the content of a work than its source, but it always has one. Notice how the impact of a work changes when the writer or story is close to home. The second sense is more abstract; it refers to a work’s subjective or psychological proximity to the reader. How personally relevant is the information or story? There can be overlap between the two senses, but a story about aliens on a distant planet can connect on a symbolic or psychological level. Location is one of the most powerful elements of information, in both fiction and non-fiction. In non-fiction, it is expressed more clearly as relevance.

This post was sparked by a recent post at the Guardian, Can you direct me to a good book? Two new literary sites are tapping into geography. The first uses GoogleEarth “to get the residents of this storied city to look into their literary heritage”.