Continuing the theme of my last post, here’s a college library in the UK in which "[u]sing the social networking site in the library is now banned" because "[d]uring peak times students had to queue for up to twenty minutes to get onto a PC in the library last week. Infuriated students were left standing in line watching their fellow students writing on each other’s Facebook walls and ‘poking’ each other." The funniest part is the response from students. Here’s a common one:
“It pisses me off,” she said, referring to other students using Facebook. “But then I do the same sometimes.”
In other words, the students get upset if they have to wait yet admit they make other wait. So, the library decided to just ban Facebook since it obviously isn’t a "legitimate" use of computers in the library. Oh, IM and gaming on library computers are banned to. "Exeter Students’ Union tried to ban Facebook on campus, but the plan was blocked by addicted undergraduates."
Another topic I’ve been on the record with is my feeling that banning a technology (Wikipedia, Google, Social Networking services, Cell phones) as a result of some not using it "correctly" or "appropriately" is short-sighted at best, harmful at worst. This morning a co-worker forwarded me an article which says that the Ohio Education Association has officially "strongly discouraged teachers from using social-networking web sites such as MySpace and Facebook to create personal profiles or communicate with students." Why, because "the dangers of participating in these two sites outweigh the benefits.” [emphasis added]
It seems that a few teachers in Ohio have created seriously inappropriate MySpace profiles which their students had access to. The examples include "one [who] says she’s an ‘aggressive freak in bed,’ another says she has taken drugs and likes to party, and a third describes his mood as ‘dirty’." As a result, no teacher should use these services. Yep, let’s take the actions of a few and apply it to everyone. Hey, a few people have hit people with cars, let’s ban everyone from cars. Better yet, let’s ban roads! That’s a great way to teach kids how to drive safely.
Well, one of the commenters to this post pointed out another blog post along these same lines. A Proposal for Banning Pencils was written by Doug Johnson, the Director of Media and Technology for the Mankato Public Schools, back in 2005. Why does he think pencils should be banned?
- A student might use a pencil to poke out the eye of another student.
- A student might write a dirty word or, worse yet, a threatening note to another student, with a pencil.
- One student might have a mechanical pencil, making those with wooden ones feel bad.
- The pencil might get stolen.
- Pencils break and need repairing all the time.
- Kids who have pencils might doodle instead of working on their assignments or listening to the teacher.
His justification? These are the same reasons for banning MP3 players in the classroom:
- They might get stolen.
- They make kids who can’t afford them feel bad.
- Kids might listen to them instead of to the teacher.
- Who knows what kinds of lyrics the kids might be listening to?
- Kids might listen to test answers.
Read both article and all the comments. Then think about your library’s cell phone policy? Is the policy based in the reality of technology today or a knee-jerk reaction to the behavior of a few?
I’ve gone on record with regards to my skepticisim about getting rid of Dewey. I believe that before we ditch Dewey (problems and all) completely, maybe we should try better signage. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about from Sandy Kallunki, Supervisor, Children’s Dept./Adult Fiction Dept./Teen Zone, Brown County Central Library. (Reprinted with her permission.)
As part of a project for making our department more "browser friendly" for people of all ages, reading levels and languages, we are re-doing our children’s nonfiction shelf signage. We are revising our "end of range" lists (signs) to include little images in addition to dewey numbers and the subject names, and then we are putting a matching image and subject name on shelf label holders where the actual books are. So for instance, the list at the end of one set of shelves includes not just "567 Dinosaurs" but also a little picture of a dinosaur. Initial reaction from kids and adults has been very positive.
We use the "grip on" shelf label holders from Demco and it is still a bit awkward sliding books over the top part.
It has been a challenge to find images that kids and adults recognize and that are identifiable when shrunk down small. Also, we looked for non-copyrighted stuff. We are happy with most of the images that we’ve come up with, others less so.
The other tricky part is that this has forced us to look at what Dewey numbers we use to try to be more consistent where possible. For instance, rather than having Titanic books in two different places (two different call numbers), let’s put them all in one spot.
We also plan to use the shelf label holders to identify popular series and authors in our chapter books section. And we have used them in our children’s Spanish section to identify where the different types of Spanish books are–picture books as opposed to nonfiction. There the challenge is translating the terms we use into Spanish.
In response to my request to reprint her e-mail here she also added:
Our new nonfiction signs/shelf labels are actually part of a 2007 LSTA grant project (almost finished) through which we are setting up a revitalized "Parent/Teacher Center" in our Children’s Department as part of a broad-based local Community Partnership for Children. One of the objectives of the grant was to make the entire department easier to "self-navigate" for our very diverse customer base.
I’ve asked for some photos and hope to share them here in the future.
"The problem is finding a disinterested authority. Anyone with a strong opinion inevitably has an ax to grind. Father Leonard Boyle, keeper of manuscripts can chief librarian at the Vatican until 1998, and a good egg by all accounts, denied it [a secret stash of forbidden pornography] in a sane, good-humored way, but then he would, wouldn’t he? By contrast the Web site of the Legion of Decency (the name’s a registered trademark) not only insists that the collection exists, it even provides shelf numbers: F2—F-1T, rows 89 to 704,969. They also say that those with a reader’s card—secior clergy only—can call the library on the Vatican in-house telephone system and have items delivered by one of thirteen young nuns in less than ten minutes. At this point in history it’s hard to believer that any library can find and deliver anything to anyone in less than ten minutes, while the notion that nuns do the delivering just sounds like feverish fancy. But I have no proof that this isn’t true. And no proof that it is."
From Sex Collectors: The Secret World of Consumers, Connoisseurs, Curators, Creators, Dealers, Bibliographers, and Accumulators of "Erotica" by Geoff Nicholson
