Pin the Tales on the Donkay: The Life of Libraries by Don Krummel As Told to Linnea Martin - professional experiences of professor emeritus of library information science and music at Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Library Trends, Wntr, 1999 by Linnea S. Martin

Students often become frustrated at the independence of thinking required. Most syllabi include from 200 to 800 sources, most of them books not articles. I asked Krummel why he doesn't provide short-cuts:

   The quick perspectives are useful, but again, you will rarely completely
   agree with any one of them. Being quick, they will miss particular
   perspectives and will emphasize others too much. Some students will need to
   work from this angle and some from that. What will be meaningful? The basic
   monumental source is different to rare book librarians, children's
   librarians, automation specialists, the general public, professors,
   administrators. There are many different takes one should get on one given
   achievement and, furthermore, the right perspective cannot be embedded in
   any single text. You need at least two melodies if any counterpoint is to
   emerge between them. I really would wish for more. One way is through your
   own writing. My history overview, "Fiat Lux, Fiat Latebra" (1994), is one
   such text. (September 10, 1998)

Information needs to be seen in context, students must read for themselves, think for themselves, make connections, and draw their own conclusions. His approach to reading is hypertextual:(8)

   The important experience is taking what you read, sizing it up, and asking
   what you want to get out of it. Is my own habit of reading really uncommon?
   I don't know; I doubt it. Some books I read cover-to-cover but most I
   bounce around in: Read chapter seven, then go to the index, find another
   section and spend several hours in it. In other words, I use them as
   reference books. Right now I'm reading several books. I have yet to read
   any of them cover-to-cover but I will. As soon as I know what I may want to
   say, I will go through each one of them from page one to the end. In order
   to get a gist of a book, my practice has been to start with the table of
   contents and the footnotes and gradually figure out where I am going to
   find what interests me. It may not be the way authors want you to do
   things, but in this case they're not the readers, I am. (September 10,
   1998)

Generous with his time in helping students develop papers or bibliographies, Krummel is elusive when asked for guidance on grades and useful shortcuts to getting good ones. I remember his response to one student who asked how many citations it was advisable to include in a bibliography for his academic

research libraries course. "I really can't answer that question" he said, "I received a brilliant one once with only three; I've received some bad ones with several hundred" (Krummel, 1995). Students must want to learn.

KNOWLEDGE AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bibliographies, to many, are lists they consult at the end of books or articles to find out which sources authors use to research and think about a particular topic. They are the means by which readers judge the background and authority of authors to make the assertions they do. Boswell noted that in browsing the shelves of a library, Dr. Johnson saw two kinds of knowledge: Subjects and guides to subjects. His "backs of books" were surrogates for bibliographies and catalogs. Subject bibliographies are portals to knowledge. However, subject bibliography is just one aspect of bibliographical work.