Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture and faith from the Antipodes.

Digital Technology

Librarians, YouTube, and the New Media Literacies

Commenting on a couple of talks he did with groups of librarians, Henry Jenkins notes:

Across both conversations, it was clear that librarians are on the front lines, dealing with those who have been left behind by the participation gap, struggling to deal with those opposed to or frightened by the participatory turn in our culture, helping anxious academics understand the value and limits of wikipedia, and so forth.

It’s something I think is really important to remember. Our librarians (public, private, academic etc.) are often charged to both stay on top of and implement ‘cutting edge’ information technology, while at the same time having to make the library’s resources available to as many people as possible – and especially those for whom access to information and library resources are not technologically or informationally skilled. Raising the technological bar in the library makes new resources available, but also excludes those who don’t know how to or can’t access these new resources for a variety of reasons.

More on Jenkin’s comments at Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Librarians, YouTube, and the New Media Literacies.