Saturday, November 13, 2021

Allege a ledge

There might be some parks and forests to document but, while still on the subject of knowledge as an overarching thing that people have to varying degrees, I failed to mention the Champion. Another tractor but with a name that could foil a Trove search by throwing up a list of unrelated champions or - adopting the opposite strategy - overlook others when the search is narrowed to 'Champion tractor' as, I imagine, not all will spell this out in full. There will be unrelated posts that happen to include both 'champion' and 'tractor' yet be about different tractors. And then there will be casual mentions of the 'Champ'.

The role of a librarian/archivist type here would be to sift through all the searches until only the relevant ones remain; a task made quicker if one is only searching for, say, magazines and journals rather than including other sources. Just as the role of the wedding photographer hasn't died out despite everyone at the event having a camera phone, the DJ hasn't lost his job despite everyone being able to stream music for an event, there remains a need for someone who can process raw data and weave it into something useful; a professional who can produce a better result or enhance it in some way.