In David Lankes' recent book The Atlas of New Librarianship, he covers the creation of knowledge and the role of librarians (and libraries) in regards to how knowledge should be provided to their communities. He reiterates throughout the thread that knowledge is created through conversation; it is not a physical object or an artifact (31). Lankes encourages his readers (us new librarians) to use new forms to expand conversation beyond going to your nearest reference librarian and asking a question (53). The example used was the program Scapes which allows members to connect search links online and interact with friends and librarians to answer questions and all together it will try to "handle the results of our learning" (60).
When flipping through the images of how Scapes works, I noticed that in Figure 32, when the member is looking to chat with the librarian for a more advanced search, he has the option of remaining anonymous (57). This prompted a question in my head (knowledge is created by conversation and the best kind is a conversation with yourself!) and I wanted to briefly blog about embarrassment and fear.
Now, did the person who was seeking to find more information about Gwen Stefani's song "Rich Girl" choose to remain anonymous about his interest in the song? From his chat picture (Figure 30) he appears to be an adult male and may be embarrassed about listening to that song all the way through; I know many guys would switch the station the first second the song started. Now, I don't hold any judgment against him for liking that song. Stefani's song is catchy and I admit I own the album and have it stored on my iTunes. But what I also wanted to bring up is the controversy of anonymity.
Let's pretend that this guy, instead of going online to find his answers about Stefani's song, he went to his public library and asked a reference librarian. While he wouldn't have to offer his name or personal information, he wouldn't remain anonymous due to the face-to-face interaction and perhaps the librarian would judge him. Therefore my question, for others to ponder and hopefully answer, is this: does fear of embarrassment also aid in the development of online or digital resources? One argument that may prove this is the popularity of using a Kindle or Nook when reading promiscuous and scandalous novels like 50 Shades of Grey so that others cannot notice the title due to a lack of book cover. Is there a fear of conversation happening? How about a fear of knowledge? Should we, as librarian students, remain anonymous because we are scared and new to the field and need to ask a question in Blackboard without judgment from others or our professors? Is this slowing down the conversations that lead to knowledge?
These are just a few questions that came to mind during the reading and I'd love to hear some ideas about the questions at hand.
And just for fun, I included the original music video of Gwen Stefani's "Rich Girl". Enjoy!
So funny you mention about using a Kindle with 50 Shades of Gray. A few of my friends have mentioned that they enjoy their e-readers because they can read romances on the subway nowwithout having to hide the covers!
ReplyDeleteJen
(thelibrarianbark)