Section Eight

8.1

When I am bored, I spend my time looking up new and interesting rules and nuances in the English language. This hobby often produces a slight tendency to revise authors' statements as I read their work. In Pettigrew's article, I found the occasional lack of proper grammatical rules to impede my reading to the point where I must include this criticism. I am aware that this does not bear heavily on the content presented in the article, but it makes me reluctant to take her seriously. I would have ignored the lack of commas, even though this led to many confusing clauses that caused me to reread sentences frequently. I would have, that is, until I came across the term "clinics" (p. 806), where the possessive form of the word is lacking the proper apostrophe, or any apostrophe at all, for that matter. Comma errors are frequent in many papers produced outside of the field of English and Language Arts and are sadly expected. This error, however, is unacceptable and attacks the credibility of the author and whichever members of the scholarly community that reviewed this article before publication.

That being said, this article actually brought me to a better understanding of context than the articles written solely to describe context. The author began the article by including the definition of context taken from the dictionary. While this may be more simplistic than one studying information behavior would like to work with, it is a graspable foundation within which to begin. From there, the author then applied context in four situations and presented specific examples relating back to these subcategories. These applications of context provided better models for me to understand this concept than confusing lists of what context is and is not. It explicitly shows context as physical surroundings, such as hospital curtains (p. 805). Once I read that, it seemed obvious that these curtains would influence the flow of personal information. It is not until after these two actions that the author begins to discuss current trends and theories relating to context. I was able to put context into... context.

Based on my new understanding of context, I can visualize my future in librarianship differently. By breaking up context into subcategories and then reflecting on it as a whole I can figure out exactly what type of atmosphere I would like to create in the media center and focus on the steps to get there. Would I want a more studious environment or one that was more conducive to pleasure reading? Or would I like to have different sections that produce different atmospheres? As one of the first librarians my future students will meet, it is my job to make sure the library is an inviting and welcoming place. This article provided me with a new way of seeing the work I have to do.