Serendipity and knowledge organisation

Abstract

Toby Burrows and Deb Verhoeven return to Walpole's original story of the Three Princes of Serendip to remind us that aside from sagacity, it is the various places that the princes travel to that afford serendipity. Consequently, they contemplate the idea that serendipity might be more than a mere passive source for finding the unsought. The design of physical objects and spaces can either afford values or undermine them. Burrows and Verhoeven investigate whether and how the value of serendipity has been realized-consciously or unconsciously-in the structures and designs of libraries and other physical collections. The ways in which such physical spaces afford serendipity is highly diverse. Libraries' fostering of serendipity is at least commonly assumed to be more pronounced than in virtual spaces, where the guiding design principle seems to be efficiency, or quickly finding what one seeks. This serves Burrows and Verhoeven as a backdrop to investigate whether virtual spaces can possibly foster serendipity to the same degree as physical spaces. In the end, Burrows and Verhoeven plea for a diminished focus on efficiency and a return to the foundational story of serendipity to guide the design of virtual search engines in the future.