Week 1 - Musings...

C. Lynch - "Information Literacy and Info. Technology Literacy..."

Lynch's writing stands out for me as a rushed, even incomplete attempt to formulate thoughts on an extremely broad topic in too small a space. Some of this could be attributed to the early date of the work and the emerging understanding of information technology literacy at the time. Lynch attempts to shift the paradigm of technology education away from exclusively skills-based pedagogy to a mix of both broader theoretical context as well as technology skills. While his push for broader theoretical education of infrastructure and systems is well-made, his analogy of teaching new software tools, understanding how to use existing tools, and ability to problem-solve with specific IT tools (software, hardware, etc.) seems to hold the same potential to 'date' and become obsolete as his analogy of 'touch-typing.' With the increasing speed of technology development, it seems that the ability to teach the 'learning of new tools' has the potential to date even more quickly than skills Lynch seems to discredit. Lynch manages to encapsulate the importance of interconnected systems and the need for pedagogy around those areas, but in general fails to entirely take into account the full nature of obsolescence as it relates to teaching of new technology.

Vaughan, Jason - "Lied Library @ four years..."

Vaughan's case study is revealing perhaps of the 'right' way for libraries to try to handle a technology refresh, provided you work in a library which appears to have unlimited institutional support and financial backing. Certainly the case study makes the important point that planning is critical to the implementation of new technologies and helps illustrate that planning for technology must be a collaborative process. If unilateral action is taken, the potential always exists for someone's needs to go unmet. It seems UNLV was mainly able to avoid this pitfall. At the same time, I was struck by the mentality I picked up on through the piece that the "latest" technology automatically equals the "greatest" technology. While UNLV lucked out on getting brand new computers with the Windows XP operating system, imagine how this article may have differed in tone if the technology refresh took place just a few years later with the release of Windows VISTA. Considering the widespread disappointment around the computing world with the reliability of that operating system, the assumption that new=best would be seriously called into jeopardy. For other libraries considering technology upgrades, the article (if nothing else) reinforces the importance of patience and careful testing to ensure that new products meet the reliability and functional needs of the institutions which they will serve.


OCLC - "2004 Information Format Trends: Content, Not Containers"

OCLC's report succeeds in identifying trends in technological development (as it relates to cultural integration and information distribution) which, primarily, have held true and which have been essentially magnified since the report was released. Especially relevant is its observation of the important impact of mobile electronic devices and their destabilizing influence over the hegemony of the computer in information content delivery. What would have been interesting to see the article address is the potential impact of information quality as the means of delivery become smaller and the expectations for information become more fragmented and less contextualized. Information sought on a cell phone or mobile electronic device is meant to usually be provided quickly and easily with a minimum of unnecessary material. With this parring down of information to the 'lowest common denominator,' it will be interesting to see if libraries (which are working to tailor their information retrieval methods to 21st century information seeking behavior) are able to maintain the quality and context of information sought while making the search interfaces relevant to a highly mobile and generally impatient generation of information seekers.