Saturday, December 21st, 2002
re: Author schmauthor
Dorothea’s rant about getting an editor to edit documents reminds me of other places where I’ve heard of the same problem, people in general seem to have forgotten that most jobs require specialized knowledge. Anyone can do them, but only after they know what the’re doing. So we see organizational webpages put up by anyone who had Frontpage, regardless of code bloat (which makes it take longer to download) and accessability problems that make it impossible to navigate. And let’s not forget my own institution where they wanted to open another library that would be run by a clerk. The librarians could teach him or her everything he/she needed to know in a couple of weeks, right?
For those who don’t understand what’s wrong with that, let me point out that I’m now in my third year of hell to get a MASTERS degree on the subject. There is a lot more to running a library than checking out books. Someone has to buy the books, which means knowing which books to buy. Someone has to select and install the computer system to keep track of the books and where they are. And someone has to put the books into the system correctly, so they can be found by topic as well as bibliographic information. And no, not everything is on the Internet. (Actually, if the publishers have their way, nothing will be on the Internet, but that’s another rant.)
The point is, it seems to be agrowing phenominum for people to forget that education and skills are involved for even a job at McDonalds (Could you work one of those cash registers?). Anyone might be able to do the job but they can’t do it well without learning the skills first.
By laura @ 6:14 pm in Internet
