Reading electronic documents has been quite a challenge for me. I thought I had "issues" ...until I read the research from Ziming Liu, and it seems I am not in the minority. I had always used the internet for browsing, social networking, and searching, but not reading. Reading a book is a beloved activity, something you can do anywhere, from the comfort of your bed, curled up on the couch, sitting in a coffee shop, on a plane, with technology nigh required.
In "Reading Behavior in the Digital Enviornment," Liu found that, over the last ten years, there is almost a 50% decrease in readers' attention span, and around 45% decrease for both in-depth reading and concentrated reading (p706, 2005). ! What? Is there a support group I can join? Joking aside, without the discipline that came with enrolling in a program that leans heavily on technology, I may never have really been comfortable reading much at all in an electronic format. And what a scary thing, to be left behind in the information age! Because not everything is in print, or at least readily available.
Mostly, where I do this e-reading is at the library- my public library. And from where I sit at the reference desk, I see I am not alone. Many people come to the public library to work on homework, find articles for their papers, find books using the catalog, even just to use word processing tools to type their assignments. This act alone binds us together as a community, or according to Ragnar Audunson in "The Public Library as a Meeting-place in a multicultural and digital context", a "back stage arena" (p 435, 2004 ). A "front stage arena" would be the schools or classrooms we habitate to obtain the higher knowledge, and the informal discussion or utilization of these subjects happens in the third place.
An interesting concept, except we aren't studying the same things. I wonder if that matters...
Along with offering technology, libraries should be a place for multiculturalism, Audunson argues. Some of the purposes of the public library are to "integrate immigrants," (p430) whether they be from another country or just another social class altogether, "promote self-realisation by being a cultural animator" but "not to make judgements and selections" (p431). I can see the parallels between college students and immigrants, that's for sure: lack of money, leaving one culture for another, shifting paradigms, etc. But librarians HAVE to make selections and judgements sometimes. Not about the people they allow in the library, or who they want to assist, but from a human standpoint... If someone asks me about using the computer, I use my judgement in how I explain what I will say based on what they tell me, questions I ask, etc. It seems that he feels librarians should be a tour guide, which is fine, but even tour guides need to make judgements. So I suppose I partly agree but partly disagree with his statements.
However, he does make a good argument that the public library is a place where people can feel like they belong to a community without having to contribute. Traditional library users are all "lurkers", but that's okay. That's how it's worked for decades- the librarians and staff do the participating, by creating and maintaining the catalog, reference interviews, checking out the books, etc. The patrons can come and go as they please during open hours, and they don't even have to check anything out. They never have to register. They can just lurk, lurk, lurk, ahem I mean learn, absorb, etc. anonymously. But if they WANT to, they can join a discussion group, attend a program, etc. And by they I mean anyone, no matter what language they speak, their citizen status, age, etc.
They can also come to use technology, and become part of the e-readers culture too, if they want. Then we can all struggle together.
Comments