Changing Libraries, Changing Technologies

The advances in technology are changing the way we as information specialists view literacy.  As Mackey & Jacobson argue in one of our assigned articles, one particular advance in technology, social media, has impacted information literacy so much as to revolutionize the thoughts behind--and even the name of--the field.

Basically, information literacy is no longer the development of a set of skills, but being able to take that information and produce it and share it online properly. I think it is this authorship that really sets metaliteracy (the new term for the new information literacy) apart.  Metaliteracy recognizes social media as an area for online development and collaboration--which are skills that Mackey & Jacobson argue are not covered in other literacies.

I had an "aha" moment during our last class period with regards to how libraries should be responding to these new technologies.  As we experience in our last class period, when the topic of social media comes up, people can have some very heated opinions.

I know that it is super trendy to be "anti-social media" or "anti-Facebook" and talk about how you've never had an iPhone or tablet because your life is perfectly fine without these things.  Believe me, I understand!  I don't own a TV and turn off my phone pretty much as soon as I get home from work.  I'm not a big Facebook fan and only recently got a Twitter.

BUT.

You cannot use your personal technological preferences as an excuse to be uninformed about current technology trends in the field you work in--and that includes social media!  If you want to be a librarian, you are accepting the responsibility of being knowledgable about all kinds of literacy, and, as our readings for this week communicate, information literacy (or metaliteracy) includes "active knowledge production and distribution in collaborative online communities" (Mackey & Jacobson 64).

One of my friends recently shared a story about working at the reference desk at an academic library. A patron approached her and another coworker and said that she needed help with Facebook.
"Oh," her coworker said. "I don't do Facebook. I don't know anything about it."

We cannot have these smugly superior attitudes if we are going to choose to work in an informational field!  We may not care what our 500 friends ate of dinner on Instagram, but my goodness, as an informational professional we should have a thing or two to say about it to a patron.

*gets off soap box*