Nov. 13: Audunson, Liu

Ragnar Audunson's article, "The public library as a meeting-place in a multicultural and digital context: The necessity of low-intensive meeting-places," discusses the role of the public library in today's multicultural world. Audunson compares modern multicultural society with "the so-called information or knowledge society" (429). He states at the beginning of the article that the two are 'seemingly unrelated' but that both have a great impact on public librarianship. I couldn't agree more, although I can easily see the correlation between the diversification of society with the information explosion we are now experiencing. It seems to me that it might be less isolating for ethnic and cultural minorities to move to a completely foreign society (the article mentions Lapps and Romany as examples), where they may not even speak the language. If information is more widely available, especially digitally, I would think this would help ease the transition into the adopted society much more so than before the advent of the Internet. Audunson traces the public library's roots from the Enlightenment to its modern role as the seat of community democracy, promoting cultural tolerance and community involvement. The public library, the author notes, should be a place "where people belonging to different cultural groups can meet and communicate" (433). He highlights this further by explaining how the wide availability of digital information can foster communication with greater numbers of people. Audunson calls the public library a "low-intensive arena" in which this communication can take place. These arenas make it possible for people from different cultural groups and with different values to come together and discuss social and political issues. He explains that "high-intensive arenas" (such as the workplace, church, families, etc.), although vital to an individual's sense of self, can "create social and cultural boundaries and demarcations" (437). The public library, therefore, must be upheld as a necessity by its community. It remains as the one societal institution where all forms of information and people from all walks of life are not only welcome but also encouraged.

Ziming Liu's article, "Reading behavior in the digital environment: Changes in reading behavior over the past ten years," looks at how the explosion of digital information has caused the emergence of screen-based reading, as opposed to traditional hand-held print reading. One goal of Liu's study is to understand these changes in order to design better digital library resources. Some recent studies "argue that the arrival of digital media, together with the fragmentary nature of hypertext, is threatening sustained reading" (701). However, Liu's study contradicts this theory. Although the author doesn't deny the emergence of screen-based reading as a new reading behavior, his study finds that most readers still prefer the printed word to its digital counterpart for a variety of reasons. Annotating and highlighting is the main reason people prefer printed documents for in-depth reading. As Liu notes, anyone can use a pencil or highlighter on a piece of paper but annotating and highlighting electronic documents requires certain knowledge that not everyone has. Liu points out that screen-based reading has its advantages, such as browsing, scanning, and keyword spotting, but that paper will likely remain the preference in the future for in-depth reading.

Liu's article struck me as quite appropriate to my life. I think the availability of information in the electronic form is great but I, both as a student and as just a regular person, much prefer to hold what I'm reading in my hand. I sometimes even print out lengthier emails just so I don't have to stare at the computer screen too long. Also, a little secret about me: I hate ebooks. Well, hate is a strong word but I don't really like them much. If I was assigned a book to read and it was only available to me online, I would be very unhappy. I would probably go instead to the public library and get a physical copy of the book. I, like many working folks, spend way too much time every day with my eyes glued to a computer monitor (well, in my case, two computer monitors). It's nice to do some old-fashioned print-based reading every once in a while. I think Liu's study is interesting and it will be even more interesting to see how reading behavior evolves in the future.