College Librarians Urged To Play Video Games 218
An anonymous reader writes "At meeting of college librarians, experts tell them they need to start thinking the way video game producers think and provide library services that will make sense to those who play computer games. 'In an era when most students would have to go to a museum to see an old-fashioned card catalog, there's no doubt that libraries have embraced technology. But speakers said that there was a larger split between students -- who are "digital natives," in one popular way of classifying people based on their experience with technology -- and librarians, who are more likely to be "digital immigrants." They may have learned the language, but it's a second language.'"
Re:As a Digital Native... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Just the opposite (Score:2, Informative)
You obviously did not pay attention and have no idea what we are talking about.
What we are talking about is that librarians frequently know jack diddly shit about computers. This is not restricted to librarians, but it is more a cause for concern with them than many others because they are tasked with making it easier (or possible) to find information. The internet is the greatest information-gathering tool on the planet, so if you don't know how to use it, you're horribly crippled in terms of being able to find information, in comparison with those who do know how to find it.
So we're talking about computer skills, and you're talking about English skills - you're having a whole different conversation! And that makes me wonder about your English skills, and your computing skills.
Further hilarity: my captcha (slashdot is not letting me log in today, is it just me?) is "informed".
Re:Libraries are due for a major redesign (Score:1, Informative)
I also want to see the whole cover -- front, spine, and back. I remember some books visually, even if I can't remember the author, title, publisher, or even the topic. Tagging the visual aspects of the book and making that searchable would also be nice. I can say "I'm looking for the owl book," and at least half the IT people around will tell me to search for O'Reilly as the publisher, even if they're not familiar with the book in question. Your average librarian might not know that unless someone goes in looking for "the owl book", and later comes back and says "It was this one." Correlating common book queries with their eventual answers is something that would make sense and should be done.
It would also make sense to have a user-driven support forum. Have librarians around to monitor it and help the people who can't get immediate help from searching the archives and asking the other forum users, but there have to be repeating questions, just like in other technical fields. Call on the knowledge of the entire community for questions like "I read a book once. It had a girl who stepped on a knife and I think it was by a lady."
Re:Just the opposite (Score:5, Informative)
The divide is likely caused in part by the age rift.. librarians are paid very low wages for a required masters degree (admittedly, more in college than in the public domain), so the job is still typically held by financially comfortable older women, just like the stereotype.
If the salaries of libraries was adjusted to be more in line with the knowledge they are expected to have, and the degree they are required to earn, then the technology initiatives that libraries are pushing these days would likely be more effective, as more "digital natives" would be attracted to library positions.
Half-right (Score:2, Informative)
IANALibrarian, but I worked as a cataloger and cataloger team lead in the early '90s, entering card catalogs, books, and other media into online databases for a vendor that serviced libraries. Many of the people I supervised or worked beside held or were seeking their MLS degrees, and at the time cataloging was respected among librarians as perhaps the most technically demanding part of their degree. I was informed last year by a librarian/cataloger colleague that the curent tendency is more and more to outsource cataloging to highly trained non-librarians, and that schools are starting to drop cataloging as a requirement to obtain a library science degree.
While there, I participated in a brainstorming session developing new services for libraries, and improving information accessibility (this was 1992). Among the suggestions given were scanning books, creating new ways of searching for data, creating new interfaces, allowing searches outside the library itself, and many more. Anything involving redesigning presentation of cataloging data was shot down because "people are used to the card catalog system." The idea that new users might want a different way, or that old users might profit by an improved approach and embrace it, was not supported.
The problem lies in the fact that librarians tend to categorize within existing systems. Even librarians who have migrated into the web world do this. I sat on a meeting discussing user interface for a personalized telecommunications site, and two people actually argued that the user interface should be identical to the directories storing the content. Those two were the sole librarians on the team, and the rest of us had to explain that the core concept of personalization (and indeed a major strength of the internet) is that content can be presented effectively in a broad variety of ways. One of them continued to resist, nonetheless, not comprehending that the architecture taxonomy did not need to equal the UI taxonomy (although of course it affected what was possible).
I agree wholeheartedly that learning to use library tools is part of learning to be a scholar. I think librarians serve an invaluable purpose. But I do think there is a hidebound tendency, which is being shown in the tendency to diminish the emphasis on online technical competency (not requiring cataloging for MLS degrees) and the tendency to dismiss the potential for improved interfaces out of hand.