Tag Archives: Social Networking

Final thoughts for librarians
First, libraries can exploit the new media to become more vivid gnodesh in peoplefs networks that can help them solve problems, make decisions, and enrich their lives. Social media can bring this to life.
Second, this new world requires new literacies. At the basic level, people cannot participate in this world without some basic computer skills.
Beyond that, the networked individuals who thrive have a combination of talent, energy, altruism, social awareness, and tech]savviness that allows them to build big, diverse networks and tap into them when they have needs. They have mastered the new literacies that library blogger Pam Berger has highlighted:

• Have graphic literacy that recognizes that more and more of life is experienced as symbols on screens;
• Know how to navigate multiple information channels and understand the change that has occurred as linear information formats such as print and broadcast media have given way to the non]linear realities of hyperlinked information;
• Know how to see the connections in the information they are encountering, even if the tidbits they gather are disaggregated from any larger context;
• Know how to focus when that is required, especially for reflection and evaluation;
• Approach information skeptically and have the capacity to assess its accuracy, authority, relevance, objectivity and scope;
• Behave ethically when they encounter information online and communicate with others electronically.
  

Third, libraries are pressured to reexamine the ways in which they have traditionally provided service to their communities. Access to information has changed. Peoplefs capacity to search for information has changed. Their mechanisms for sorting and making sense of information has changed. The methods of curating information has changed. The ways in which information is granted legitimacy and credibility are changing. The mechanisms that people have for reacting to and contributing to information have changed. In short, it’s a new information ecology requiring vastly different survival traits for information users . and the librarians who help them.

library, libraries, social networks, social media, Pew

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