The information literacy articles I consulted for this week’s class are all from the Library Quarterly, probably because its the only library journal archived in JSTOR. Full citations are as follows:
Bertot, John Carlo, Charles R. McClure and Paul T. Jaeger. “The Impacts of Free Public Internet Access on Public Library Patrons and Communities,” Library Quarterly 78/3 (2008).
Julien, Heidi and Cameron Hoffman. “Information Literacy Training in Canada’s Public Libraries”, Library Quarterly 78/1 (2008).
Patterson, David. “Information Literacy and Community College Students: Using New Approaches to Literacy Theory to Produce Equity,” Library Quarterly 79/3 (2009).
Contrary to my initial assumptions, the first article (“Impacts of Free Public Internet”) does not take the stance that free public internet access at public libraries is a universally essential and positive service. Mostly, this comes down to budgetary concerns. The authors of the article clearly believe that libraries can better use their money to buy print materials instead of maintaining the hardware and infrastructure necessary to provide a particular community with an outlet for free internet. Furthermore, they contend that other community and governmental bodies should share the burden of providing this service, both through funding and staffing. Surprisingly, the subtext of this article seems to accuse patrons of taking internet access at the library for granted and acting ungrateful. While it is never explicitly stated, and the concluding sentence exhorts librarians to look for creative ways to maintain this service, the authors appear to have a certain resentment of change, and especially of being forced to shoulder the burden of this change alone.
The second article, "Community College", was heavy on the french philosophy and short on facts. I kept wanting the author to provide me with some statistics to back up his evaluations of community college students as almost universally victims of the "digital divide", but instead he seemed more interested in the "magnificent" musings of De Certeau, which state that reading creates "gardens that miniaturize and collate a world". Poetic, certainly. Helpful? Not really. I'm not sure I understood more than 50% of this article, and even though it takes a significant amount of obfuscation and purple prose to confuse me, some of the author's digressions made little sense. His frequent referrals to the ancient catalogs of Hittusas and Nippur--quite apart from being somewhat discordant notes in an article that also discusses Wikipedia--take on much more significance than they are due. One sentence on librarians as historical gatekeepers of information would have been fine, but I think hyperbolic section headings like "The Hattusas Catalog, Hostile Encounters and Disqualified Knowledge" really distract from Patterson's message, which is, simply, that librarians in community colleges have the potential to help their students succeed at transitioning 4-year universities by giving them a sophisticated grounding in IL and taking a look at their own power structures.
The last article ("Canada's Public Libraries") takes an almost completely opposite approach, but ends up with essentially the same conclusion as the other two--information literacy training is most important to the most disadvantaged and public libraries shouldn't have to bear the burden of providing internet access all on their own. Instead of Patterson's disconnected philosophical ramblings, however, the team of Julien and Hoffman take an eminently practical approach--they conduct a study. The concrete, quantifiable results of the study are presented with contextual information and explanation of results. This is by far the best-structured, unbiased, and most useful of the three articles I read.
First of all, I love reading your wonderfully witty writing! Ok, down to business. Wow...it almost sounds as if these articles were whiny...and even pretentious in one case. What I find interesting is the great deal of talk about providing internet service. With funding for libraries becoming more difficult to come by as it is, I wonder who they think would provide funding for the internet? I also found it interesting to note that they were discussing this in information literacy articles. It makes me wonder if the authors were aware that information literacy has a much broader scope than what is available on the internet. Food for thought, certainly!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe you found such arcane crap (first two articles) in Library Quarterly! I could not agree with the first article's contention less. I read in the recent 2010 OCLC "Perceptions of Libraries" report that 7 out of 10 public libraries report that they are the only free source of internet in their communities. I can see why libraries are unhappy that other government establishments don't help out, but aren't most libraries worried that they're seen as useless?! Gee, "we should get rid of a unique service we provide that can't be found anywhere else." Thinking like that may be what gets libraries in a bad place to begin with. Helping less priveleged, disabled, or older users become somewhat technologically literate is what I spend a lot of time doing at the AADL, and what seems to be demanded of me more than anything else. And if you look at the wants of most younger patrons, number one is "more computers"!
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