In Pursuit of the Obvious
There’s something especially slippery about the idea of obvious. For example, it seems really obvious to me that the little red card on top of the catalog terminals explains that you can’t get to the Internet-at-large on those computers. Judging by the number of times each day that I explain that you can’t do that on those computers, it is not obvious. Each of us can cite instance after instance in which we’ve explained the obvious to our users and clients.
What is it about this idea of obvious that is so appealing and yet so unattainable in general?
Clearly whomever chose our signage thought it was obvious at the time. Even I thought the signage was fairly straightforward until very recently. One day I was trying to see our library through someone else’s eyes and I realized that our signage is mostly gray. The walls in the library are gray. There are gray cement supports running throughout the library. Perhaps our gray on gray on gray scheme is not especially obvious. It’s more like camouflage in fact. We do have an especially snazzy bright red floor, but alas our signage is not on the floor. (Although a colleague recently suggested we mark out on the floor routes to the obvious locations in the library—printers. copiers, reference, etc.—in the fashion of hospitals [and prisons]. I love this idea!)
It used to be that when I would design a handout or class exercise or whatever I would try to expose the students to detail—not the obvious stuff that anyone could notice. Now I do just the opposite. I take everything my training has taught me is obvious (sure, it’s obvious to most librarians) and strive to call attention to it in a way that is easy to understand and makes sense to the students in the context of their assignments.
In a larger sense I wonder if there is anything that is truly apparent or obvious—or is everything bound to be subjective forever?
