 |
 |
|
Appendices: 
|
SeamlessnessThe traditional separation of academic, leisure and work time is fusing into a seamless world aided and supported by nomadic computing and information appliances that support multiple activities. This phenomenon is most marked among young adults,20 but one only has to look at advertisements in any business magazines or newspapers to find images of people sitting on beaches, in restaurants and other leisure locations, making critical business decisions or sales, using some kind of wireless appliance. And the advent of wireless appliances and communication is allowing less developed countries a chance to leapfrog a generation of landlocked technology. But it is young adults that this section focuses on: they are the most numerous population on a college campus, and they form a significant portion of any public library’s community of users. It is also with this group that the biggest disconnect between the current structure and presentation of content in libraries is most evident. The Internet is a technology as ordinary as television to this group and the Web is an information necessity. There’s an adage that goes like this: Technology is what happened after you were born. “There’s a seamlessness to the interactions of young people. Their academic, social and community lives are merged. But library environments still cater to our generation with separate spheres of information. We have to figure out how to be relevant.” —Director, Public Library The freshman class of 2003 grew up with computers, multimedia, the Internet and a wired world. Twenty percent of them began using computers between the ages of 5 and 8. By the time they were 16–18 all of them had begun using computers.21 Their world is a seamless “infosphere” where the boundaries between work, play and study are gone. Computers are not technology and multitasking is a way of life. This generation of young adults mixes work and social activities, and the lines between workplace and home are blurred. The compartmentalization of leisure activities from work activities that their parents still mostly adhere to is largely unknown to the current group of college students. “Today’s digital kids think of information and communications technology (ICT) as something akin to oxygen: they expect it, it’s what they breathe and it’s how they live. They use ICT to meet, play, date and learn. It’s an integral part of their social life; it’s how they acknowledge each other and form their personal identities. Furthermore, ICT to some degree has been supporting their learning activities since their first Web search and surf years ago.”22 A significant indicator of the collaborative, synchronous world that lies alongside the asynchronous one adults inhabit is the amount of “gaming” among students as reported by a recently released Pew report.23 Sixty-five percent of college students surveyed reported playing video, computer or online games regularly or occasionally. This gaming activity is not segmented into a part of the day deemed “leisure.” Students report playing games in class, while visiting friends, while instant messaging and in between doing schoolwork. They do this using any convenient computer. The report concludes that students are taking their leisure “in sips, rather than gulps” and suggests that not enough research is being done on what this “always on” interactive and seamless world implies for the future of work and entertainment. “The rate at which information is assimilated into knowledge and knowledge is synthesized into new forms [...] is vastly more multidimensional than the 19th century paradigm of classroom instruction.”24 “Interactivity is a hallmark of young people’s lives. They live in a collaborative world that doesn’t exist for adults.” —Director, Public Library Contrast this seamless world with what students experience at most libraries. Despite the increase in “information commons” in academic libraries and banks of publicly available computers in public libraries, libraries frequently designate different computers for access to content as they do for e-mail and writing papers. And even if this is not the case, there are almost always separate spheres of information presented: “Web resources,” “article databases,” “online catalog.” And once inside these spheres, the information seeker is often presented with brand names: Newsbank, ProQuest, WebCat. Given the characteristics of young adults suggested above, it is perhaps not surprising that Pew reports 73 percent of college students said they use the Internet more than the library.25 “Librarians are put in the unfortunate position of telling people to eat their spinach, that fast food searching isn’t enough. But if a vendor could deliver quality material through Google interfaces, they would have an advantage.”26
The strong interest in more collaborative, seamless environments has not gone unnoticed by information sector companies. Many large software and content providers are building integrated platforms and suites of software to allow for the exchange of information, enable commerce and support new and dynamic forms of collaboration. One-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many exchange mechanisms are becoming embedded in the general communication devices and software that consumers use. Amazon, Google and Yahoo are actively embedding these new collaborative technologies in the services. Libraries are not using many of these collaborative technologies. “In the old days the library was it—there weren’t many other choices. Today, that is not the case.” —Director, OCLC Network |
||||||||||
