Greetings and Salutations!

Consider a letter. "E," for instance. Its particular lines, separately meaningless, impart certain limited bits and pieces of information. Its presence in a word gives us hints as to the word's pronunciation. The "E" may sound like "Eeeee" or "Eh," or it may not sound like anything at all, but it is guaranteed to not sound like an "M."

It is only in the context of a word that those three horizontal lines and single vertical one have real meaning. "Bell," for example, nails down the letters' pronunciations and carries with it a meaning all its own. Upon seeing that word, some of us may picture a cracked monolith in Philadelphia while others can imagine a tiny jingler on a Christmas cap. But only the ignorant (or excessively imaginative) will picture, say, a nimbus cloud.

In the context of conversation, of sentences, vague words are given concrete meanings and new questions are raised through the words' interplay. It is therefore in the very structure of language itself that information and knowledge are first organized. Through a process of stringing together otherwise meaningless tiny markings, one's thoughts are codified and made manifest in a recognizeable fashion.

Many millions of people have set down their thoughts in this fashion over the years. The sheer bulk of written information would be impossible to amass in a single building, let alone digest by a single mind. How does a library determine which books are necessary and which are superfluous? And how does a user dig through the stacks of books to find the information he needs?

It is these practical questions of organization, along with the theoretical definitions of information itself, that I will tackle here on The Empty Shelf. It's weighty stuff, and kind of dry, but it's stuff that every librarian will have to tackle sooner or later. So I hope you'll join me as we peer down the rabbit hole!