On the Boundaries of Reference Services: Questioning and Library 2.0
2009; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 50; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2328-2967
Autores Tópico(s)Library Science and Administration
ResumoPerceptions of Informatics undergraduate and and Information Science (LIS) graduate students about librarians and were examined for students' experience with sites, and whether students considered topics such as social networking, blogs and wikis to be appropriate for questions to librarians. While the majority of the Informatics undergraduates had created content within social networking sites and wikis and nearly half had posted to blogs and video-sharing sites, only about one-third of the LIS graduate students had created social networking site content, and graduate students reported low activity in blogging, wikis and video-sharing. Results of a companion study of implementations among 242 U.S. public libraries as future employers were also discussed. Findings raise questions as to whether LIS graduate students are prepared to answer questions about and provide information services using technologies, and whether Library 2.0 training should be integrated into LIS education. Keywords: LIS education, 2.0, 2.0, reference services, library science, informatics, information technology, surveys, interviews Introduction sites and services are a new addition to the information milieu. As noted in a timeline by Reid and Gray (2007), sites such as YouTube (http:// www.youtube.com), MeetUp (http://www. meetup.com), LiveJournal (http://www. livejournal.com), Blogger (http://www. blogger.com), Wikipedia (http.7/www. wikipedia.com), Friendster (http://www. friendster.com), Technorati (http://www. technorati.com), MySpace (http://www. myspace.com) and Facebook (http:// www.facebook.com) have all launched since 1999. Unlike the earlier Web 1.0 pages which tended to be one-way conveyers of information with users as passive recipients, the newer sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Delicious (http://Delicious.com), Flickr (http:// www.flickr.com), and YouTube allow users to contribute content and to interact with other site users. YouTube, for example, allows users not only to pas- sively watch videos but also to actively upload videos, comment on each other's videos, assemble a collection of favor- ites, subscribe to channels of works by favorite creators, and indicate when their own videos are posted in response to an- other user's video. MySpace and Facebook similarly facilitate posting of personal profiles for networking with other users and sharing daily updates with friends, while sites such as Blogger and Wikipedia exemplify the focus on user-created written content. Time mag- azine highlighted this paradigmatic shift in the empowerment of Internet users by selecting YOU as their 2006 Person of the Year (Grossman, 2006). Today's users not only read the but write the news within their blogs and write the encyclopedia through their Wikipedia edits. The advent of information resources and services brings with it the need for research to understand its impact on libraries, librarians, and library and information science (LIS) education-an area increasingly being referred to as Library 2.0 (Casey & Savastinuk, 2006; Crawford, 2006; Miller, 2005). This study explored how 242 U.S. public libraries, as future employers of LIS graduate students, implemented Library 2.0 technologies in their information services; further, through surveys with Informatics undergraduates and LIS graduate students, this study examined student attitudes toward 2.0, their prior experience with these technologies, and their perceptions of whether librarians should be knowledgeable about and able to answer questions about these sources, in order to better understand the impact of on training needs for LIS education. Literature Review A key criticism leveled against LIS education by the library community has been insufficient technology training for LIS students to meet library workforce needs (Dougherty, 2006; Hill, 2008). …
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