IM's Broader Social Implications for Libraries. IMing Revolution Suggests Broader Social Implications
"This generation is one of multitaskers who believe they can and are
getting more things done simultaneously. It's hard to believe that
multitaskers can do all those tasks well, as anybody who has driven
behind someone on a cell phone will tell you. But that issue aside,
maybe we are slowly wiring future generations in a new way. Maybe 40
years from now, we'll drive and yak as easily as we walk and chew gum
today. Maybe we're turning ourselves into what our newest cell phones
are: portable units capable of communicating in multiple formats.
Parents are seeing their high school teens rewiring their brains
now. When the kids aren't talking on the phone, they're texting on it,
and when they get home, they're IMing on the computer. Wary of this
form of communication, many schools restrict cell phone use to prevent
in-class chatting -- and cheating. But if the use of instant messaging
is an indication, there are signs that these communication habits will
stick with teens even beyond their college years....
So if this isn't a group of successful multitaskers, they think they
are, and their skills will evolve along with the cell phones that
already can surf the Web, play games, text-message, show television and
download and play music.
But that evolution also means a whole
group of children is being left behind because there's still no bridge
across the digital divide. Chances are most of the respondents in the
Pew studies were neither minorities nor from lower economic
backgrounds. Low-income families are less likely to have a computer at
home, and minorities are less likely to start using a computer at an
early age, according to recent findings of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The
foundation's study of Internet access and use by children ages 8 to 18
found that because of this class-race gap, technological literacy --
understanding the language of icons and knowing how to find information
online -- was lacking among many minority children from lower-income
homes, which were unlikely to have a computer or Internet connection." [Chicago Tribune, via textually.org]
Which, of course, is where libraries come in. Back in the 1990s,
libraries debated whether email was a valid use of public computers,
and now we're having that same discussion about instant messaging.
And you know what? The answer is the same - patrons using the
internet to communicate, connect, exchange information, or just plain
chat is indeed a valid use of public terminals. We have to get over
this issue now because when we don't let them IM in the library, we're
telling them that we don't value their preferred method of
communication, whether it's with their friends or with librarians.
We're telling them that the library is not a place for instant
messaging, so go somewhere else to do it.
Except that they are going to go somewhere else and do it (at least,
those that can), and they're not going to come back and they're not
going to think of the library when they think of instant messaging.
Would your library find that attitude acceptable if we replace IM
with "email?" How about if we replace IM with "telephone?" [The Shifted Librarian]
8:49:22 AM  Google It!.
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