LIBR 203 - Lesson 9 Readings Passwords and APA

I suppose it should come as no surprise by now that much of the content on this blog is shaped by whatever I am required to produce for my classes. That should, however, be no excuse for a bad quality posting. While I may have low standards, especially if you ask about my many many mistakes in life, I do have them. As such, I shall attempt to make this post as entertaining as possible given the subject matter...which would be about as successful as squeezing blood from a turnip, but I digress.

As I've discussed before, the internet and it's social networking components have a definite impact on the world and it would be foolish of us as the keepers of the world's knowledge to ignore it's potential to reach people. This fact is most certainly not lost on Stevens, who discusses the issue at length in his first chapter of Library Technology Reports (boring name, but what do you expect from us librarians?) The possibility for customers to be able to more easily access a librarian and get user feedback about various collection materials could allow patrons to literally shape their own library experience as they see fit. While some traditional librarians may see that as ridiculous, I cannot help but see that as a huge potential to not only change, but radically improve the quality of library services by reaching out to our customers.

Unfortunately, it is an opportunity that we have been remiss in taking advantage. Most retail businesses have already implemented such technology on their own websites to improve the customer experience, and have reaped the benefits of such efforts. Hearing that the private sector is ahead of us in that respect is in many ways to be expected. Finding out that apparently militant groups and Pakistani terrorists have been using facebook and twitter to reach potential recruits; far ahead of our own efforts to reach our customers, is rather sobering, however.

A recent article by WAT Media reported that members of Pakistani militant movements have already, and possibly successfully begun recruiting people into their ranks through social networking technology. More disturbing is the fact that these efforts have dated as far back as the mid 90s; with early online forums and websites. Keeping this in mind, I'd have to say that we librarians are really behind the times. I mean, come on, people; if TERRORISTS are actually using this kind of technology ahead of us, that doesn't exactly speak well of our efforts in integrating new technology into librarianship. Below is a APA citation of the aforementioned article:

Militant groups joining Facebook, Twitter increase - cause for concern. (Aug 2010). WAT Media. Retrieved August 31, 2010, from URL

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