Week 1- Reading Response

Information Literacy and information Technology Literacy – Clifford Lynch
I am incomplete agreement with Mr. Lynch’s definition of Information and Information Technology Literacy. I also feel that his definition goes a long way towards making the argument that print is still the most efficient delivery system for information and ideas. Why? With print, basic literacy means you learn how to decipher the symbols which comprise our language. Once you learn, there is no impediment to your reading anything, except availability and personal interest. With computers and other forms of IT, on the other hand, you must constantly learn and adapt to new symbols comprising new languages, as well as new required skills. Concrete example: I don’t pick up a book, magazine or newspaper between the ages of 18 and 50. At age 50, I can pick up any book, magazine, or newspaper I want and jump right in with few problems (maybe my eyes will tire). Conversely, I take a bunch of Computer and IT classes so that I can merge on the info super highway. Then, I just put it on cruise control only to discover a mere two years later that my machine is no longer adequate to function, and that I have no idea what’s going on or how to find what I need. In other words, the effort to maintain IT literacy is perpetual and consuming.
The one element common to both print and digital information is that the most important aspect of literacy is discernment. It is here where I feel that the library can maintain its role as the premier provider of information. Many people lack the experience, confidence and/or knowledge to assess the value of given content. The library can brand itself as the place to go to have accurate info at your fingertips—we vet the sites for you, or we can teach you how to do it yourself. In addition, when you take into account the often prohibitive costs of existing—not to mention emerging—technologies, the library becomes the only point of access to digital information, and for even just the computers themselves, for a great percentage of the population. Given the current state of the economy, this is hardly going to change anytime soon. If the libraries across the country handle the demand well enough, it might never have to. And since I believe that the public library exists to ensure equal access for all segments of society to all types of information; continually providing the ever-changing technologies would be a pretty good thing.

Content not Containers – OCLC Marketing Staff
The part of this essay that I had the strongest reaction to was the example of “WebBrain” contextual searching. To me, it looks just like Aquabrowser, which the Free Library of Philadelphia adopted a little more than a year ago, and which I cannot stand. Perhaps I betray my age, but there is nothing helpful about an apparently random assembly of “suggested topics,” especially because I am rarely, if ever, using the library’s online catalog because I wish to browse.
The other part of the essay which I reacted strongly to is the implied death-knoll of print information because of the rise in ebooks, audiobooks, and other non-print media. I do not contest the statistics, merely their interpretation. It is possible that one day people will be more comfortable reading Dostoevsky on a Blackberry or Smartphone, but, to me, the drop in print sales is more indicative of the fact that people are reading less overall. As an undergrad, I did a group project about the “future of libraries in an ebook world,” and the one thing that stuck with me (although it was not my part of the project) was the growing trend of text-searching, wherein a person searches inside the text for “relevant” parts, and then only reads those parts. And these are students and academics, who you would assume would want to understand an issue fully, not just a narrow area within that issue.
Finally, I am all for the syndication of journals and magazines—JSTOR is one of my all-time favorite resources, but the fact is that I could never afford a personal subscription and without access to a university or public library, I’d never get to use it. It is this syndication that enables a small, rural library in Podunk, Middle America to be the intellectual equal of the NY or Phila. System (if their budget is large enough, that is). Ideally, everything that has ever been or would ever be in print will be digitalized and available for syndication on the internet (I’m thinking the google book project, project Gutenburg, etc). However, having worked in one of the country’s Government Doc depositories and having seen the awful condition of material on microfiche and film, I have to come down strongly in favor of keeping print copies around for when better technologies are developed. If we cannot digitalize something to perfection, it should not be done.

Lied Library @ 4 Years – Jason Vaughan
Because I work in a busy branch in a large city, there is not much new information here for me. About the only thing that caught my attention was the value-judgment Vaughan placed on the “community” patrons’ computer use. Beginning on page 41, the article lays the foundation for devaluing and prioritizing an individual’s use of the computer. According to Vaughan, 90% of the library’s computer use is “faculty, staff, and students,” with the other 10% being lumped as “community.” Vaughan claims that this 10% is responsible for 17% of all time spent on Lied’s computers. In Vaughan’s own words “community users are not in an academic program and come to surf the web, check their email, and play games, as opposed to ‘academic’ work.” I checked into it, and while I was thinking that “community” users meant people like me who lived nearby and paid for library privileges (for example, a UPenn library card costs roughly $500 a year), it turns out that they are actually only teachers, academics and professionals affiliated with Nevada’s System of Higher Education. As a person unaffiliated with either UNLV or NSHE, I am only permitted borrowing privileges and access to databases—no internet browsing whatsoever—as long as I have a valid state id and a credit card (as collateral-- the borrowing/database privileges are actually free).
As such, I find Vaughan’s assertion that “community users” impede and often prevent students with “legitimate needs” from using computers to be not just “disheartening” but offensive and somewhat ludicrous. After I read that the library planned to “limit what internet resources community users can access, to help cut down on networked game playing, e-mail, and generalized web-surfing by this group” (42), and, even more mortifying, that library employees could see who was on what computer, how long they had been on, their affiliation (student or “community”), etc. and kick a “community” user off in favor of a student who may or may not have the assumed “legitimate” needs, I thanked God and all concerned that I worked here in Philadelphia, where a child who wants to go online and play stickdeath is just as important as the adult who wants to go on and update their resume—in some cases, don’t ask, don’t tell is a wonderful policy. We don’t censor what you read or watch, and we don’t place value judgments on your activities, we simply provide equal access on a first-come, first-serve basis. (of course, there are always exceptions and special circumstances, but it seems to me that our egalitarian approach makes those exceptions more palatable to those who aren’t getting one).