Re:

Mr. George,

I think you missed the entire point about the analogy between the church and a library. It’s about information exclusivity and ritualization. Priest and Librians act as the gateways to knowlege that each institution contain and are knowledgable in the archaic ways to find that information. In and age where information flows freely on the net, Libraries must update how they are used or face rapidly becoming obsolete. In other words, we don’t need the high-priests of information any longer.

- James

James Cowgill, at 2:35 pm EDT on June 25, 2007

Games are not for Everyone

There should be a distinction here that was not explicitly made. Gaming technology is what needs to be emphasized, not the playing of games with respect to library services.

The digital native an immigrant alike enjoy getting to what they are looking for quickly and reliably.

The authors suggestion that librarians should play more games is best taken lightly, and maybe better stated as librarians should support game technology for providing library services.

Technologies like artificial intelligence and drop down menus can enhance on-line research and browsing of library records.

At issue is the role of the librarian which as the article suggests is changing from a stoic oracle to an enabler for its customers.

Jeff M., at 3:00 pm EDT on June 25, 2007

Priests and Priestesses

Mr. Cowgill,

I think you may have missed Mr. George’s point. Librarians — if I may, in keeping with the tone of the above article, generalize with a very broad stroke — are not the revered gatekeepers to knowledge. Nor do they regard patrons as supplicants; many would both scoff at this idea and find it insulting to, once again, be portrayed as that crusty, dusty, out-of-step purveyor of all knowledge who only helps the worthy. Nothing could be further from the truth. And describing library services as ritualized as the “stations of the cross” is ridiculous. Nothing keeps a patron from walking up to the desk and asking a question, any question. Neither praying to Melville Dewey nor lighting of candles at the public OPACs is required before approaching the desk. Just come and ask a question. It’s as simple as that.

Also, information doesn’t always “flow freely.” Ask any student who has been assigned a topic for a paper that requires the use of scholarly sources how easily and freely what they need is free (and easily found) on the net. One final point: as there is always a buck to be made, information exclusivity isn’t going away any time soon.

Krista Schmidt, at 3:25 pm EDT on June 25, 2007

Milla Jovovich’s character in the Fifth Element

Essentially, and I truly have had this idea for over a decade, and before I describe it, I’d like to say for the record I would like to be included in the renovation of the mind that this concept will catalyze. Just as in Fifth Element when Milla is learning about earth’s history. The ONLY and I mean ONLY way to appeal to gamers is through video collage. I do visuals for parties, I’m doing one for Girl Talk this Thursday, thing is, video jockeying has veered into the comprehensible realm of straight up video mixing, providing no counter point. In other words, there is no collage if all you’re doing is taking a beastie boys video and a rage against the machine video and mixing them. Sure most people will love it, but its easy, its comprehensible it makes sense, and for all those reasons, ultimately, its boring. No irony means no interest, even if the viewer doesn’t immediately see what is ironic in the first place.

My style has always been trying to synchronize the randomness of the atmosphere, in general, SPECIFICALLY. So those dancing continue and those not dancing begin to, mentally, the prefix of the sentence points to the veracity of its content by rhyming. Anyway, here’s the idea, the GUI, graphical user interface is essentially, well, a screen, on the screen are three buttons which are each controlled by physical controllers that also have at least, three buttons. Around the screen are 26 smaller screens each representing a letter of the English alphabet, however, we can get to that later, essentially its just further content refinement, obviously alphabetical, however, there will be overlap based on tagging, hierarchically. The three buttons control the RMM or rapid media marks the user makes as the and yes this will be the screen saver, an algorhythmic multimedia (oh scary word) collage unfolds based on previous cookies of recent user queries, the collage will get more specific as the user continues to RMM. Conversely the user can also submit a query and the collage can begin there as well, based on content tagging.

Tagging is one of the critical growth industries of this era of the mind.

So as the music, print media, visual media unfold, the user is given options, controlling the edits per second as well as the transitions (primarily crossfade)times, and or simultaneneous layers of visual on visual. These controls resemble the pitch lever on a conventional dj turntable. Once the edits per second is in place, up to twenty per second for hardcore gamers to two every five seconds for seniors, after that is set, the fun begins...even more.

The THREE BUTTONS. One for Data, one for Audio and one for Video. As the collage unfolds the buttons are used to equate what the users finds interesting, which they indicate by pressing the buttons. Data would represent any print media, photos, NY TIMES, Anne Fadiman books etc, audio, music, field recordings, spoken word, video, television, documentaries and movies, etc. Each time a button is pressed the media fragment is tagged into the appropriate subscreen. Once if ever the user is finished researching the content, they can peruse what they’ve chosen and get directions to download it or the path to its physical location, if it is in fact still checked in at the library.

On my myspace you will see an example of my style of video collage on the left side, scroll down, its about Marshall Mcluhan. My youtube, second account first one get suspended due to the two second inclusion and static tag for a British comedy cartoon called Modern Toss is http://www.youtube.com/WOMP2007

You’re welcome, its about time, had this idea since 1996

Richard Altman, I’ve had the solution to this for 11 years at alone in the future on this one, at 3:25 pm EDT on June 25, 2007

First, the author’s assumption that Librarians, for the most part, are not digitally savvy is just plain wrong. I know well the prevailing stereotype of the little old Librarian in the musty stacks, as I live with it daily. Having completed my Master’s Degree in 1997, and working in an academic library ever since, I can flat out inform anyone that today’s Librarian is a far cry from the little old lady saying “shhhhh” from days gone by. Most of us have been raised with computers and speak the language quite well, thank you. I, for one, have had every gaming system known to man since even before the Atari 2600 (What was before, you say... That would be ‘Pong.’) So I, and many other Librarians today, are definitely ‘Digital Natives.’ I would even wager that there aren’t many students at my college who could stay in a game with me on “Madden 2007.”

So, everything this article says about information access is what I strive for daily in my career. From designing our Library Website with the ‘no reading of manual required’ mentality to constantly promoting the online databases to which students have access, I believe completely in ease of use.

But I also think the analogy of game playing can only go so far. Just because I could beat 90% of people on “Madden 2007,” does not mean that I could cut it in NFL training camp. Sometimes, even with information access, the user must take some initiative and not expect to have a virtual information world just handed to them. The virtual world and the real world may look alike, but they are often very different.

J. Miller, Librarian, at 6:05 pm EDT on June 25, 2007

Missing the point, indeed

One might say the suggestion to play more games should be taken lightly, but the reality is that it shouldn’t. There are some big ideas buried in the activities of digital natives, and many of them are difficult to uncover without first-hand experience.

While technology is an important piece of the puzzle, it is only one of several ways that games inform digital natives. Natives have a different relationship with language and visual representation; even a different understanding of interpersonal conduct. It’s not just drop-downs and AI that matter; this is a whole new way of thinking.

Unlike television or telephone, the internet serves as an always-on many-to-many cultural conduit—ham radio for the soul. Digital natives never leave market square. And unlike comic books, video games are an immersive play-space where formative experiences occur. To people in this world, digital avatars aren’t abstract. Many children spend more time in game worlds than their own neighborhoods. Game worlds are the setting for shared cultural experiences and learning. More importantly, they are heavily-tested use cases for self-motivated and peer-guided learning, finding and doing.

Mr. Schwartz: I’m sorry to tell you, but it’s you that needs to RTFM, and video games and the surrounding digital culture are TFM. Learners of all ages have changing expectations. A vast repository of information is a wonderful thing, but it will die if it is not easy to use. At various times in my life, I have been a heavy library user. I cherish the value libraries bring to a community. But even I have a hard time choosing the library over a Barnes and Noble with a Starbucks. They know what I like :)

Jonathan Bruder, Digital Native & Library User, at 8:05 pm EDT on June 25, 2007

Spot on

As a 25 year old librarian, and having worked in both the public and private sectors for a number of years, I would like to applaud this paper. I’ve seen the rift between what I generally term “old school vs new school” tear apart progressive ideas and library/community programs purely to satisfy some kind of conservative ideal about what a library should stand for. Changing thinking and attitudes is a *huge* problem with this industry, and for those of you replying to this post and denying a problem, you either (a) have your head in the sand, or (b) work in one of those rare progressive libraries. I’ve presented to others in my profession on ways to embrace the digital natives — responses range from enthusiasm, confusion or fear. Raise the establishment and push forth, that’s what this article is emphasizing, and its what our profession should be doing. I’m not talking about the idealistic banter that fails to translate into something tangible, but the solid plans to push forward.

And for the publishers out there who continue to suffer severe bouts of technophobia in this emerging digital realm, get off your high horse and embrace 2007. Surely you’ve witnessing the embarrassing struggle the music industry has had with the digital realm, so stop playing the victim and lead the way, not tow the line.

Sean Boden, Librarian, at 4:30 am EDT on June 26, 2007

There is a sign in our post office which reads something like: No dogs allowed except those accompanying blind persons.

B. Johnson, Barf!, at 9:10 am EDT on June 26, 2007

My sister was a teenage multitasker in the 1950’s: I can remember my father telling her:"Get your butt off the phone, turn the radio off, quit writing in your diary, and focus on your algebra homework.” P.S. It didn’t do any good, she failed algebra anyway. Our generation (Bill Gates, Steven Jobs) of “Digital Immigrants” worked hard to create the cyberspace infrastructure that “Digital Natives” enjoy today, and they did it without the benefit of having any video game playing experience under their belt. How did the world ever produce an Albert Einstein, who didn’t even have a good calculator, much less a computer to play video games on. Physically whacking around on a computer keyboard develops research skills...? Right, and Paris Hilton should teach driver’s ed. I observe students almost everyday using computers in a two-year college library, and I see very few “Digital Natives” using computers to complete course assignments or for academic research (there are of course, many exceptions). What I do see are many students, before they fail out anyway, skimming rapidly (superficially) through, seemingly endless, pictures of potential dates on Myspace or Facebook, while they listen to music (there’s that multitasking again). Maybe at term paper time, they will ask me: “Uh you remember that EbscoHost you told our class about?” “Think you could help me find a couple of articles?” It seems that “Digital Natives” don’t always know their own “language” very well. Pay attention! And yes, read the instructions!The way technology is changing, today’s “Native” could very well be tomorrow’s “Immigrant". We have some wonderful and powerful tools. We just need to learn to use them better, and use them at the appropriate time and place.

Jim Kennedy, at 12:00 pm EDT on June 26, 2007

Misinformed

“There is no catching up with the digital natives and the brick and mortar libraries will eventually die off maybe sooner than you expect.”

Librarians have been hearing this argument for decades and it’s yet to happen. I don’t think brick and mortar libraries are in any danger of going away. What technology-only lovers don’t realize is that there is a completely different group of people out there who still love the printed word, who want to hold an actual book in their hands, and feel that reading something off a computer screen is not ideal. His statement is such a gross generalization.

As to digital libraries, yes a lot is being done. However, not everything needs to be or should be digitized and librarians are well-trained to help decide what should be and how it should be done. But there will be problems with this. Haven’t you been following what Google is going through with it’s plans to provide online content of books. We’re talking about things like copyright and intellectual property. Providing digital content involves more than just scanning a book in.

In general, I find the disconnect between IT and librarians rather alarming. In most places I’ve seen that it there is a war going on between the two areas when we really should be working together. Most librarians are willing to conceded that technology is our friend and ally in assisting library users. We like the fact that users don’t have to come to us physically anymore and that we have the ability to go to the users virtually and physically.

We are only enemies if ignorance of our individual, but equally important roles, is allowed to continue.

Jill, Librarian, at 2:20 pm EDT on June 26, 2007

read first or play first

Information users have so many learning styles, info-seeking styles and even different individual approaches to various research projects. This article and most of the comments seem to be dealing in black vs white, where there is really room for many approaches. The best libraries and librarians IMHO provide information access methods to suit as many of the users’ styles as possible. Some researchers or information seekers *will* RTFM. Some will never read it, but will get by with searching the PDF file for the immediate answer. Neither is “right” nor “wrong;” the two approaches are just different. Why exclude some info seekers by, for example, throwing out all the microfilm and books in favor of computers? Wouldn’t it be just as silly to throw out all the computers because some users want to use real books? The transistion from 20th century to 21st century information seeking behavior might take a few decades. Is that so bad? What does it hurt the “digital natives” to learn a little history lesson about “old time” information seeking behavior?

Dell Bayer, Technical Librarian, at 4:55 pm EDT on June 26, 2007

The presentation, and accompanying topics, hit the mark and yet go wildly astray. Catering to the preferred modes of information retrieval and exploration of the “Students Of Today” is all well and good. It certainly shows that libraries are in touch with their patrons’ inclinations and are doing their best to “remain relevant". With any material that is being produced electronically, with clear access rights, we can meet the users’ desires.

However, there’s a tremendous backlog of material that is nowhere near ready for the digital world. At Penn State Libraries, we have between 4-5 million books, and an overwhelming number of these are dusty old books without online searchable text. Even of the online resources that we have, most are licensed and can only be accessed through the provider’s highly restrictive access point. These aren’t things libraries can control; they just deal with the realities of providing access to the content they have. It’s unrealistic to exhort librarians to abandon old ways of finding text and cater to current modes when most of the text is bound up in old, varying formats with restricted means of access.

Patrons may want the ease of access that the Internet has trained them to expect, but beyond the Internet, the world is not all digital. Patrons either need to learn how to find books the Old Way (i.e. searching the online catalog, going to the shelf, and :: gasp :: skimming through the book to see if it is relevant to their research topic), or supplicate the “high priests of librarianship” who spend their time learning the Old Ways, becoming familiar with the divers collections in their libraries and helping others find what they want. If a patron really wants the information, they’ll buckle down and learn all of the tricks needed to find what they want. Or they can ask, and librarians will provide, to the best of their ability and funding (oh, that ugly topic!).

Google is making headway in converting physical text to digital, and perhaps within a decade, they’ll have roughly 80% of the commonly held _public domain_ book collections available online. The libraries that can afford to digitize their collections are chipping away at that. But conversion is a massive enterprise and will take money, manpower, and most of all, time. Even then, not everything may be online. Some materials — brittle books, rare collections — will remain offline. Modern patrons can ignore these offline materials, but they do so at their own peril. The consequences of remaining uninformed falls on the shoulders of those who choose not to inform themselves in every way possible.

Larry Wentzel, Digital Preservation Coordinator at Penn State Libraries, at 4:25 am EDT on June 28, 2007

Some good advice, some hype

I think it’s very useful to have played a modern plot-based video game when explaining things to students. I don’t know if it helps *them* but when I can describe the research process as being similar to such games— where you need to collect things from different places and put them together, where there is help online and from other people, and where the ultimate goal requires thinking... I feel more comfortable about showing students the different steps and procedures we have.

To me, the cool thing about doing research is that it’s like playing a video game except that you don’t need to have good hand-eye coordination, and you never have to wait for a new game to come out with a new quest. :)

The question is, what do YOU do when you get a new database? Do you sit down and play with it, or do you read the manual first? Most librarians I know play first, then read the manual, then play some more.

This is the model I see with gamers to some extent. There’s another model, where people start gaming with their friends who’ve already played the game, and who offer help/suggestions over their shoulders. I’ve seen that too. That’s our role: we make a living ‘playing the research game’ so we know all kinds of helpful shortcuts. We’re like GameFaqs for the research library: if you want to get the Blue Chalice of Power, we can tell you what databases to look in or what buttons to push.

Jennifer Heise, Librarian, at 11:05 am EDT on July 2, 2007

Riding the Fence – DN or DI?

I also started on the Atari 2600 playing Tank and Pong, but I didn’t start using a PC until I was in college. Does that make me a native or an immigrant? Either way, the argument that libraries are being made redundant by the new technological mindset is pure fiction. We are driven by information, and not all information is easily understood, let alone accessed. The information professional is even more necessary and relevant now as ever.

Perhaps libraries should be revered and thought of as churches of the mind, and maybe librarians should be thought of as priests (I prefer Info Guru). However, Mr. Needham is way off base when he implies that librarians wield the “I grant you info/No info for you” magic wand. As has been stated in another comment, everyone is worthy! It’s not up to the librarian to make that determination. Please approach us and ask for guidance. We don’t bite, we don’t judge. We want everyone to share the knowledge. Information is important – nay, it is empowering! Whether a digital native, immigrant or luddite, everyone should afford themselves the opportunity to learn and grow intellectually; otherwise this “broader cultural divide” will manifest itself into intellectual haves and have nots (or knows and know nots?) We can all recognize people who can present themselves intelligently and form cohesive arguments, and we can all recognize people who do not have these skills. We run the risk of those who never read the FM not knowing how to read — or understand what they’re reading — at all. I agree with previous posters that lowering the consequences of failure is a dangerous path on which to embark. Information is important, and anything that important is worth working for. We should raise the info bar, so that drinking from the cup of knowledge tastes that much sweeter! I’m sorry to be snarky, but Al from IT’s post makes my argument for opening the pages of a real book or journal and reading it. I hope the code he writes is cleaner than his grammar and usage!

Is eschewing the FM the exclusive purview of the DN? My father tried to put up a set of bookshelves without reading the FM, and he’s somewhere between DI and luddite. I argue that it’s human nature to try, to figure out, and to RTFM only when necessary. If this was not the case, then the whole profession of technical writing would not exist. Why distill the instructions down to readable format if the DI is perfectly happy to read the long form?

Mr. Needham’s list of suggestions may exemplify his ideal in library service, but in reality many are purely theoretical and impractical at best. For example: • Offer online services not just through e-mail, but through instant messaging and text messaging, which many students prefer. [Figure out how to train, staff and maintain this service with your existing budget and personnel. Fire “old timers” (i.e. anyone 45 or older) who can’t figure out how to IM without reading the FM.] • Hold LAN parties, after hours, in libraries. (These are parties where many people bring their computers to play computer games, especially those involving teams, together.) [Tell your library staff that they will have to stay after hours to keep the building open. Figure out how to pay staff overtime to do this. Also, librarians will have to learn how to play these games (on their own time of course).] • Schedule support services on a 24/7/365 basis, not the hours currently in use at many college libraries, which were “set in 1963.” [Tell librarians (many of whom are unionized) that they need to work out a 24/7 schedule, whether there is a need for it or not (remember, George Needham says it’s perfectly fine to pay twelve staff to cater to three patrons at 2am). Hope that the union doesn’t notice or, if they do, that they’ll be nice when they file the grievance.] • Remember that students are much less sensitive about privacy issues than earlier generations were and are much more likely to share passwords or access to databases. [Be prepared to explain this to subscription online providers who stipulate in the contract to limit usage to only two users at a time. Be prepared to explain to students and faculty why said online provider cancelled service due to breach of contract from over use.] • Look for ways to involve digital natives in designing library services and even providing them. “Expertise is more important than credentials,” he said, even credentials such as library science degrees. [Have the utmost confidence in your “doctor” who got all his training from Discovery Health Channel, and enjoy your home build by an architect who subscribed to the entire Time-Life DIY series.]

I don’t doubt that the librarians in attendance were taking furious notes – they were probably wracking their brains trying to figure out how to implement these suggestions. I need a few rounds of Space Invaders just to calm down from reading this post!

Caroline Bordinaro, Instruction Librarian at CSU Dominguez Hills, at 4:00 pm EDT on July 12, 2007

Gaming Presentation

If any of Inside Higher Ed’s readers would like a copy of the presentation I offered at this seminar, I would be happy to send it to them. Just e-mail me at needhamg@oclc.org, and I’ll get it out right after the ALA conference. I’d hate to be blamed for anyone’s writer’s cramp!

George Needham, VP, Members Services at OCLC, at 8:30 am EDT on June 25, 2007