;-)

I envision a utopia where all information is free, findable, and equally accessible to everyone. I imagine what students’ online spaces could look like–personalized networks of blog entries, geocoded photos, and del.icio.us lists, as well as scholarly articles, classmates’ wikis, podcasts of instructors’ lectures, etc.

Then I snag on the thought of the slow-moving behemoths (a.k.a. publishers and database vendors) clutching their licenses to scholarly and archived material. I have to hope that they, like major record labels, are beginning the descent into obsolescence. We need more of the academic world’s equivalent to Radiohead; more creators of information with the means and vision to offer their original research directly to the consumer.

In the meantime, I lead students through the labyrinth of library databases. Occasionally we jump into Google Scholar, and the difference in interface and ease of use between the library databases and Google is remarkable. It should always be that easy to find and access peer-reviewed, full-text articles.

And they are, of course, right to expect that.

“Patrons vacate, despite the fact that the library is chock full of print material. If it’s not online, it doesn’t exist.”

Yep. This is why I hope that your role can evolve from the kinds of support tasks you describe to one where you coach your patrons not only on how to effectively navigate online spaces, but also how to effectively create their own.

Most of my patrons are of non-traditional age, in their thirties or older, many earning their B.A. for the first time or beginning a second career. They are not interested in learning why something went wrong on their computer (“intelligent diagnosis”), or in troubleshooting the problem (“repair”). They want it solved, and they want it solved five minutes ago. And so they call me over.

As a person whose job it is to show people how to find and use information, I struggle with this. I have to consciously and constantly strive for a balance between showing my patron how to avoid the problem next time, and just solving it for them so they can finish writing their paper.

This is especially challenging because the students here are so technologically uncomfortable. They use computers because it’s an easy way to find research, and because their instructors require it. They want computers to perform perfectly at all times, and don’t want to hear that “our systems are complex artifacts and things will go wrong.”

It’s interesting to note that when something does go wrong–for example, when our wireless connection in the library cuts out–the room clears in about two minutes flat. Patrons vacate, despite the fact that the library is chock full of print material. If it’s not online, it doesn’t exist.

Default solution has always been “reboot” – my telephone advice to requests from home is “turn off the router, turn off the DSL modem, reboot” (at least until we installed Ubuntu, that is, but that had its own “civilian” problems with graphics drivers).