New Pew Study Finds that Those Who Use the Internet Most Use Libraries Most, Too.
I’m a school librarian so, take it from me: this is welcome news.
Starting around the mid 1990’s, just as lots of folks were taking their first white-knuckled spins on the Information Superhighway, I began to dread telling people what I did for a living. That’s ’cause I came to almost expect–though I never got used to–the following response:
“School Librarian, eh? Since everything’s on the Internet now, I’m surprised schools still have libraries.”
Ugh. I never quite figured out how to begin to rebut that lame-logic ball o’ wax…
Meanwhile, at about the same time–mid 1990’s–if anyone had cared to actually look, they would have found that my school library business was doing anything but drying up. In fact, driven by factors like the Harry Potter reading renaissance and–yes–ubiquitous access to the online resources we make available, my school library program was more robust than ever.
And, a decade or so later, that trend continues…
So it was gratifying to finally see a study that indicates what I knew intuitively: the Internet and libraries aren’t locked up in some sort of zero sum game struggle for survival. Instead, they complement one another nicely, and they attract the same sorts of users.
Here’s an Associated Press article on the study’s findings as republished on the PC World web site.
Since I’m both a school librarian and a technology columnist, I’ve always been particularly uncomfortable knowing that there’s a specious assumption floating around out there that personal digital technology will eventually supplant “brick and mortar” libraries. I mean, can’t the public, like me, love them both?
Plus, discussions of libraries and technology tend to focus on information delivery, but libraries are about so much more than just information. How can people, in framing comparisons, entirely miss the enrichment, teaching and learning, economics of sharing and sense of community libraries deliver?
I hope that this Pew study is the first sign that my profession has turned a corner in terms of public awareness. I hope it’s a bell-weather indicating that people are beginning to understand that there’s a synergy and not a rivalry between libraries and technology.
As a footnote, coincidently, I write this having just tested the Kindle, Amazon’s e-book reader, for an upcoming column. It’s the best e-book reader I’ve tested thus far and, if it catches on, it could precipitate another big shift in the media that libraries deliver. If that does happen, and e-books and the Amazon model of delivery really do take off, I hope that the public will be a bit more circumspect this time around and not assume that video automatically kills the radio star.
I can’t take another decade of dreading being asked what it is I do for a living.
