Comments on: Pretentious…language…dork http://shinylib.com/2009/05/09/pretentiouslanguagedork/ the shiny librarian Thu, 05 May 2011 15:47:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 By: Jenn http://shinylib.com/2009/05/09/pretentiouslanguagedork/comment-page-1/#comment-3465 Jenn Tue, 12 May 2009 21:48:44 +0000 http://shinylib.com/?p=271#comment-3465 We've been haggling over semantics in our instruction committee now that we're making plans to start a series of *actual* orientation sessions at the start of the fall semester. There's the concern that we'll confuse the faculty who refer to instruction sessions as orientations, the concern that faculty will think that library orientations will suffice and not schedule library instruction and concern that we're far too concerned about it altogether. It might be important for everyone in the library to get their lingo straight, so we can talk to each other intelligently, but for faculty and students, I think you're right. A preoccupation with jargon, whether it's "OPAC" or "database" or "instruction vs. orientation" is just us missing the point. We’ve been haggling over semantics in our instruction committee now that we’re making plans to start a series of *actual* orientation sessions at the start of the fall semester. There’s the concern that we’ll confuse the faculty who refer to instruction sessions as orientations, the concern that faculty will think that library orientations will suffice and not schedule library instruction and concern that we’re far too concerned about it altogether.

It might be important for everyone in the library to get their lingo straight, so we can talk to each other intelligently, but for faculty and students, I think you’re right. A preoccupation with jargon, whether it’s “OPAC” or “database” or “instruction vs. orientation” is just us missing the point.

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