Information overload and turning off on reading

Concerns about information overload are not new although in the age of the Internet people may be gaining a greater appreciation for its implications. Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune reported on the results of an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that found 27% of Americans had not read one book in the past year. At this past ALA Annual meeting Eli Nieburger of the Ann Arbor District Library quoted a frightening statistic about the number of people who never read another book after high school: 58%. I tried to track down the source (in a quick Googlish way) and found it at ParaPublishing’s website, which quotes research by Jerrold Jenkins. Now, I have no idea who Jenkins is and I am much more inclined to view the AP statistic as more authoritative. Still, they are both pretty unsettling to a librarian who loves to read.

I believe it was Herbert Simon, the Nobel Prize winning psychologist, who came up with the concept of “satisficing” behavior. Basically the idea when applied to information seeking means that people stop when they find something that is good enough instead of looking for a resource with maximal value. Simon also wrote about the reality that a glut of information results in a lack of attention. Eszter Hargittai (check out her blog) teaches in Communications and Sociology at Northwestern University and has done some fascinating research in this area.

Librarians’ self-perceptions have been so tied to physical books and buildings. We need to question what that means in a world of content that is increasingly online and in multiple formats. Those working in academic libraries have to recognize that classroom instruction is changing and incorporating information technology in ways that are intended to engage students. I’m not just referring to course management systems like Sakai or BlackBoard. Professors are experimenting with using emerging technologies such as blogs, wikis, and podcasts in their classes, tools that many students already are adept at. Is the profession keeping up? If we hold service as a fundamental value of our profession, what are individual librarians doing to keep up with these new expectations?

All the News That's Fit...

I woke up this morning thinking about information overload. We have so many channels of information at our disposal and yet we use only a fraction of them. I don't watch TV much at all and have turned down my usage of the radio. I'd rather listen to what I have on my iPod. There used to be a limited number of media channels and so it was fairly safe to assume that most citizens in the United States were getting a lowest common denominator of information. Different from the single channel of information disseminated by state-controlled media but a similar idea. But now with the proliferation of channels available and the pervasiveness of the Internet (I agree, pervasive to those in highly populated areas not necessarily rural America) expectations of information consumers have changed. It seems like Chris Anderson was right with the whole Long Tail thing. This is the niche generation. More and more of us are opting for tailored news, only looking at our narrow interests. What happens to those serendipitous finds we used to come across in scanning the paper? Right, I am not a big Cubs fan but could always make conversation at the water cooler because I'd seen the headline about the previous games results.

We make assumptions about so many things and the biggest is that people are like us. Perhaps that's because we surround ourselves with like-minded folks and so that assumption is reinforced on a regular basis. We share similar interests and concerns with our friends. We read, listen to, view the same types of news and entertainment sources.

Can you believe it but I used to assume that everyone used libraries?! How could I be so naive? Anyway, one day in 1986 or so I was talking to a colleague, Bruce Foster, at Northwestern in Academic Computing. He was the man who enabled me to get every NOTIS employee an email account on Bitnet. Bruce destroyed my innocence (okay, I exaggerate!) by telling me that there was this whole group of people on campus who never darkened the doors of the library, preferring to work at their computers day and night. Now, in many ways I have become one of those people. I use the library more via the computer than in person, often grateful that I can go online and conduct a search when the library building is closed. My library school office is in the IUPUI library and so I am there at the end of each week. I also am a big user of the Evanston Public Library but more as a quiet place to write than to do research.

So what is it with control of the information I am consuming? I now have the capability to retrieve customized content on an up-to-the-minute basis but I have lost the peace and calm I used to associate with reading the paper or browsing shelves in the library. It seems as if by gaining more control over the information I consume that I have lost part of the gift that I associated with libraries and reading. This morning is just seems like All That News Is Giving Me Fits!!