From Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology
by Robert J. Glushko
What do books in libraries, spices in kitchen pantries, boats in marinas, weather observations in a data repository, songs on a smart phone or music player, paintings in a museum, animals in a zoo and a professor ’s lecture notes on his personal computer have in common?
At first glance, the answer seems to be “absolutely nothing.”...
But if we stand back a bit and take a more abstract look, we can see that all the things can be seen as the same thing. Books, spices, boats, weather data, music files, paintings, animals and lecture notes are all “resources”... that have been intentionally selected and organized....