Some of the readings for my cataloging class are from the 1968 edition Patrick Wilson's book Two Kinds of Power: An Essay on Bibliographic Control. I want to quote a few lines here which are example not only of his humor but of the new perspective he puts on topics which we have been discussing in the MLIS program, in this case the criterion of relevance
for evaluating performance of an information system.
But what of the relation of a request to things provided in response to the request? Certainly that relationship is not known under the name ofrelevance.If I ask a butcher for a leg of lamb, and he gives me one, I do not congratulate him on his excellent estimates of degrees of relevance, and indeed I cannot even understand what it would be like to do so. For he has not given me what is relevant to my request, he has simply given me what I asked for.
I find this description very clarifying. Although Wilson himself describes two non-library-specific meanings of relevance,
it is a relief to think that I can (for some purposes at least) substitute the vague question Is this relevant?
with the more concrete Is this what the patron asked for?
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