I’ve been digging around the works of S.R. Ranganathan for some time now, triggered by reading David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous just over a year ago (as reported here).
Regular readers may remember Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science:
- Books are for use.
- Every reader his or her book.
- Every book its reader.
- Save the time of the reader.
- The Library is a growing organism.
Well, regular readers may have remembered them, but I didn’t. For some strange reason my mind blanked out on the first one, I could only remember four. So I did what anyone would do, and looked up Wikipedia. Found what I wanted. Loitered languorously in the area without intent. And came across this, by Alireza Noruzi:
Application of Ranganathan’s Laws to the Web: “The Five Laws of The Web”
- Web resources are for use.
- Every user his or her web resource.
- Every web resource its user.
- Save the time of the user.
- The Web is a growing organism.
Read the rest of Alireza’s paper, as he explains why he thinks the way he does. It’s worth it. More later.