Guédon J C
Département de Littérature comparée, Université de Montréal, Quebec, Canada.
Bull Med Libr Assoc. 1999 Jan;87(1):9-19.
"Virtual libraries" and "digital libraries" have become stock phrases of our times. But what do they really mean? While digital refers to a new form of document encoding and must be approached from that perspective, virtual resonates with aspects that modern philosophy treats with benign neglect at best. The word virtual harbors the notion of potential, and therein lies its hidden strength. Although strong commercial interests try to use the shift to a digital environment to redefine the political economy of knowledge, and thus virtualize libraries into a state of almost complete impotence, all hope is not lost. Librarians of virtualized libraries may well discover that they have re-empowered institutions if they place human interaction at the heart of their operations. In other words, rather than envisioning themselves as knowledge bankers sitting on treasure vaults of knowledge, they should see themselves as "hearts" dynamizing human communities. They should also see themselves as an essential part of these communities, and not as external repositories of knowledge. In this fashion, they will avoid the fate of becoming an oxymoron.
“虚拟图书馆”和“数字图书馆”已成为我们这个时代的常用词汇。但它们究竟是什么意思呢？虽然数字指的是一种新的文档编码形式，必须从这个角度去理解，但虚拟这个词所引发的一些方面，现代哲学最多只是轻描淡写地对待。“虚拟”一词蕴含着潜力的概念，而这正是它隐藏的力量所在。尽管强大的商业利益集团试图利用向数字环境的转变来重新定义知识的政治经济，从而将图书馆虚拟化到几乎完全无力的状态，但并非毫无希望。虚拟化图书馆的馆员很可能会发现，如果他们将人际互动置于业务核心，就能重新赋予机构力量。换句话说，他们不应把自己设想成坐拥知识宝库的知识银行家，而应把自己视为为人类社区注入活力的“心脏”。他们还应将自己视为这些社区的重要组成部分，而不是知识的外部存储库。这样，他们就能避免成为一个矛盾修辞的命运。
