I’m sitting here at the Open Eye Cafe, a rather counter-culture sort of affair with used furniture, young men and women dress for summer, leaning intently toward their laptops, sipping very good coffee, a fairly happy song being played through speakers, simple guitar and unhappy female singer. I’m here for the Chapel Hill Blogger Meetup — but it must be the wrong night, or the wrong coffee shop, or it could be the wrong time of the year to expect anyone to arrive to talk about blogging when they can sit with their feet up on the back porch and enjoy a humid but not unpleasant breeze.
Ok! Enough! Let’s make proper use of my time and write my second shift for libraries and librarians — now that I’ve got your attention. My first shift stirred up quite a roundtable of conversation from some really important people. I’m humbled and also emboldened by the discussion, so we’ll blaze ahead. As you recall, I suggested that as information continues to change, becoming more and more critical to our endeavors and, at the same time, less finely defined by it’s containers (or lack there of), then its consideration becomes less based on its source and more on its value, in terms of the goals we are trying to achieve. Of course it isn’t so simple, and I suspect that the truth of it exists in the conversations that hang from yesterday’s post. Perhaps it is most simply stated that…
we will not as often consider the source first and then its value,
and instead,
consider the value first and then the source within the context of the goal.
So that’s librarians and what librarians (and the rest of us) do. What about the library. It came up several times in the conversation, each time met with my urging for patience. If you go back an read the original post, I said that “Libraries, as we (traditionally) think of them, are soon to become obsolete.” The libraries that I visit and remember have been places where you go to find information. Sometimes it was a casual wondering through a topic of interest. Other times it is a purposeful search for the answer to a question. But it was a place to go to consume information.
We continue to use information with a vengeance, but we pay to have it flow into our homes through cable TV service, Internet, audio book services, online catalogs, online music services, satellite radio, blah blah blah. We want the information to come to us, from a global information grid. We don’t want to go to it, where it waits, at attention, on book shelves.
Certainly the library is far more than just a storage of content to most of us. As one of my commenters mentioned, students like libraries. They like to be there. But what might a library become, that is essential to prosperity, democracy, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as book repositories were in the age of Gutenberg.
Those who have heard me speak or read my books know that I often make the distinction between the way that my generation thinks about information, and how our children use it. In talking about the long tail, I point to the thousands of people who are now generating income by producing content that is in some way valuable to other people. My own books are helping to pay for my children’s college. Not all of it. Out-of-state tuition is a monster. But the point is that today, as we continue to succeed in teaching our students to be skilled consumers of information (readers and learners), it is critical that we also do just as good a job of teaching them to be skilled producers of information.
Now, while I continue to maintain that every citizen of a thriving economic and democratic society should have convenient access to digital networked information, and that it is in the national interest to assure that this happens — It is another matter to provide for every home video and still cameras, micro-phones, scanners, sophisticated media editing software, etc.. I think that most people will need a place to go to produce compelling content. They will need access to equipment and materials, and they will need someone to support them in moving from being tool-builders to being refined communicators. Think “Kinkos” without the bill. Think of a community building place where people come for rich communication, not just to read. Think of a public work environment.
Certainly, many libraries are already doing these things with much celebrity. But I believe that in order to survive, which they absolutely must, librarians are going to have to expand the range of services that people identify with the library. Perhaps libraries should feature some local film festivals, talks from local authors and digital (and analog) artists, information architects, local musicians and composers, video game clubs — all geared toward demistifying the process and making anyone an information artisan.
2¢ Worth.
Image citation (The image above is a mashup of two pictures I found on flickr’s creative commons archive)
Kork, Zachary. “Minneapolis Public Library: Central Library.” Zachary Korb’s Photostream. 2 July 2006. 28 Jul 2006 <http://flickr.com/photos/zkorb/180202370/in/photostream/>.
Midiman, “Recording.” Midiman’s Photostream. 6 Dec 2005. 28 Jul 2006 <http://flickr.com/photos/midiman/70866693/>.
Technorati Tags: librarians, libraries, library, warlick
Dear David,
I’m sitting in a cyber-cafe here on Cape Cod, one of the very few, with an eclectic mix of teens, hardcore Web surfers, and tourists who are hanging here since it is cloudy outside and not a “beach” day. However, one interesting thing that I am doing is that I am not hooked to the access point in this cafe. This town, Orleans MA, has gotten an grant to blanket the town with wireless, so I have hooked, for the first time, into the Wireless Community network. Very cool and I guess I will have to walk through town with the laptop open to see how extensive the coverage is!) On to the comment…
I am still stuck on the “value versus source” portion of the original post. Your change in wording to “consider the value first and then the source within the context of the goal” is more agreeable to me. However, I still have trouble thinking of a situation in which correct and authoritative information would NOT be within the context of the goal. If I am fixing my leaking sink, I would want to know that the source of the information knew what he/she was talking about. If I am doing research to support a senior project, the information better be reliable.
Now, if I am looking for opinions or other people’s take on a topic, college, or news story, then I guess I could consider the value before I consider the source, although I would probably also practice my critical evaluation and recognition of biased sources skills at the same time.
I will give it more thought…BTW, I do love the Q. It does have its quirks, and is something to get used to, but I am having fun with it!
Take care,
Kathy Schrock
So, Alan November and I (I used it first) do a demonstration using a web site about Martin Luther King that is actually maintained by a white supremicist group. The activities is designed for shock effect and to illustrate strategies for “Exposing Truth” with some digital content techniques. Alan demonstrates the use of domain registers and I de-construct the URL.
Under most circumstances one would absolutely NOT use this site as a source. However, if the assignment is to produce some information product about propaganda in the 21st century, then the site might be perfectly appropriate. It would be valuable, within the context of the goal.
It’s like the difference between Google and Technorati. Google is better in most instances because it links you to web sites that have been formally published. No guarantee, certainly. But Technorati links us to the global conversation, what people are blogging about things. Sometimes, what you need to learn or express about something has less to do with what that thing is, and more to do with what people think about it. In those cases Technorati and the blogosphere become a better place to search.
Does this make sense?
Once again, this is all based on the assumption that kids are learning ethical use of information as a literacy skill!
I think that one point that is being left out of the argument as to why we may need a physical place called a library has to do with accessing the internet in terms of speed. If the internet should ever loose its “neutrality,†of free non-tiered access to information then the members of the lower socio-economic groups may need high speed internet which they may not be able to afford and can only get it in a library. Students who have dial-up or slow DSL will be at a disadvantage when accessing information.
In regards to the value versus source issue I tend to agree with Kathy. Coming from an upper elementary school teacher position. I think the word value may not be the correct word to describe the usefulness of the information found. It implies that I esteem the information when in fact its usefulness could be of little value (remembering where it came from or later usefulness) if it answers my question or for students the assignment. Is eating at McDonalds value because I lose my hunger? I use this analogy because my students do consume information and they do not consider a source viewed on the screen with any consideration to whether it is authoritative or not. In other words my students already consider “value†first. The ability to look at information on the screen makes it consumable because the tools of cutting and pasting imply the source is not authoritative. What I mean is that a student would never consider taking a pair of scissors to the encyclopedia Britannica but doing so to an online source is second nature. The physicality of the source lends itself to an air of authoritativeness. The container means authority for the students while the lack of it means only value is to be considered. I hope this makes sense.