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BIBLIOGRAPHIC INSTRUCTION:
THE DIGITAL DIVIDE AND
RESISTANCE OF USERS TO TECHNOLOGIES
Philip Doty
In LIS we have
a long tradition of helping users learn to use the tools and resources
that we make available to them in whatever institutions in which we
work. This tradition has an inherent controversy
that we have touched on elsewhere in this course: to what extent should information professionals be teachers?
This question underscores the tension between
retrieving information for patrons and helping patrons become increasingly
more self-sufficient users of resources themselves. Certainly, these two goals are not mutually
exclusive, but they are in tension, and the integration of advanced
information technologies into our field exacerbates the existing tension
and gives rise to some new ones. The
need for determining how to support users in the increasing number of
information transactions that do not directly involve our traditional
institutions is especially acute.
Our field’s efforts that have been most concerned with
helping users become better versed in the use of information resources
historically are most often called “bibliographic instruction.”
Plainly, that is now an anachronistic misnomer, although it is
the most commonly used term. In
its stead, the terms “information literacy,” “library instruction,”
“digital literacy” (Gilster, 1997), and some of their analogues (<grin>)
have gained currency.
Some thoughts on literacy
and the digital divide
In one of the texts for the class, Hobart
& Schiffman (1998) spend a great deal of time discussing what literacy
is and how it has both reflected and contributed to a new, more abstract
turn of mind. As indicated in
the Study Guide to Part I of the book and
in their own discussion, much of their argument is contentious.
One element that they barely touch upon is that literacy is not
universally desired or admired. Some
historians and more critical scholars of literacy remind us that oral
cultures and subgroups are effectively undermined or, often, destroyed
by the spread of reading and writing.
Further, all cultures, even the most literate, depend upon the
inherent power of oral structures and traditions.
These points are often ignored in LIS and education because of
our commitment to reading and the liberating power of literacy.
But other approaches provide another take on literacy (Knoblauch
& Brannon, 1993). The work
of Walter Ong, cited in Hobart & Schiffman (p. 279), is also important
to this conflict, especially his Orality
and Literacy.
Cultural subgroups and their status in society are
of increasing interest to our field and others.
One of the particular tropes now current is the so-called digital
divide. This concept intends to indicate the chasm, socially, financially,
and in other ways, between the information haves and have-nots. The haves are characterized by financial stability,
successful social institutions and structures, information skills, technological
access, and political resources. The
have-nots, in an implicitly patronizing way, are thought to be characterized
by deprivation of all kinds, including lack of access to information
and, especially, to information technology. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
has produced several very useful reports on the digital divide; the
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), especially the station here in Austin,
is also quite involved in identifying and addressing areas of inequity
in access to IT; and the work of the Digital Divide Network (2000) also
may be of interest to you.
At the same time, however, we can tease apart the concept
of the digital divide in a number of useful ways that brings the political
abstraction of the digital divide to earth for professional practice
and political action. Taking just one tack, we can interrogate the
presumption that “access,” however defined, is important. Essential questions are left unanswered:
what is access that matters to the client?
What particular up- and down-stream functions does such useful
access require? What are the important barriers to access beyond the usual ones
of geography, income, class, and (sometimes) gender? (Doty, forthcoming). We cannot afford to parrot concerns about the
digital divide we hear from others.
We need to look closely at our own communities, their deficits,
and their resources to determine precisely what needs to be done and
why, how to address the profound inequities that characterize our society,
and the roles that IT might play in doing so.
This kind of reflection is an essential part of the information
professional’s responsibility and needs to be part of any program of
bibliographic instruction or information literacy.
Literacy has been joined with a related concept – numeracy. Paulos (1992) and his other works are the classical references.
What Paulos and his supporters claim is that the ability to manipulate,
understand, and evaluate numbers (or numeracy) is as important as the
ability to manipulate, understand, and evaluate letters (literacy).
Washburn (1990) expands numeracy to mean scientific literacy,
i.e., the ability to understand, manipulate, and evaluate scientific
and technical claims. Further,
he says that such numeracy leads to more productive and participatory
public policy making. For Washburn, American culture is animated
by a false belief that scientific sophistication is the purview of only
a few, the elite, the anointed, mostly white, male, professors, scientists,
engineers, doctors, and some business people (p. 156).
Instead, he offers a vision whereby, just as the printing press
made literacy available to the many, the computer will make numeracy
available to all. While his
optimism is somewhat tempered, his vision is one that offers a fundamental
challenge to our field.
In the same collection as Washburn, Kwasnik (1990)
offers an expanded model of what literacy means.
One of her fundamental arguments is that the concept of literacy
is “fluid and changes depending on the historical and social context
in which it is considered” (p. 127). She reminds us of one of the major contentions
of Hobart & Schiffman (1998): those
of us who are literate find it very difficult to identify and understand
the meaning and effects of literacy. Her discussion outlines four assertions made about literacy: literacy has been defined as a primary academic
skill (the functional literacy of reading and writing in an educational
context), as a cognitive and developmental factor (in the expansion
of an individual’s intellectual and emotional reach), as embedded in
a social context (as a political event and catalyst for liberation and
social change), and as an abstract concept (a consciousness of language). Her table contrasting literacy and illiteracy
(pp. 132-133) along these four dimensions is quite useful.
Kwasnik’s argument then turns to how computer
literacy compares along these four dimensions with literacy (pp. 136-138).
In summary, she says that both (general) literacy and computer
literacy are “defined as information competence rather than mechanical
competence alone” (p. 138, emphasis in the original). Such information competence means the ability
to interact in a consequential and engaged way with our environment
in a number of ways. From this
perspective, being able to read, write, and compute are merely mechanical. “True” literacy is the ability to integrate
new knowledge, organize existing knowledge, organize knowledge according
to different schemata, recognize the context as well as the analytical
components of a problem, and choose, use, and evaluate appropriate tools
to address an information need (pp. 141-142).
Kwasnik’s cataloging of information competencies echoes
one of the most influential conceptual frameworks in bibliographic instruction: the Big6 Skills of Eisenberg & Berkowitz (1990 and 2000). The Big6 skills are the ability to:
a) Define
the task – to define the nature of the information problem and the purpose
of any particular information strategy
b) Determine
information seeking strategies – to identify the types of sources
and methods for acquiring them to meet the needs of the defined information
task
c) Locate
and get access to information – to find and retrieve specific information
from particular sources to meet the need
d) Use
information – to apply the information to the defined information need
e) Synthesize
– to integrate, structure, and rearticulate the information to address
the defined need
f) Evaluate
– to determine the success of the process and whether the defined information
need was met.
This approach is problem-based, is designed to fit
into the context of Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive objectives,
and aims toward the development of critical thinking.
While the Big6 approach has a great deal of power, it also has
serious weaknesses. Chief among
these are the fact that users often lack well-formed statements of information
needs, as well as the model’s reliance on problem-solving rhetoric. Often, the need for information and its use are situated in circumstances
that are not as well-defined, discrete, and monolithic as problems.
Bibliographic instruction (BI) and
library instruction (LI)
As noted above, bibliographic instruction is used,
despite its limitations, to identify information professionals, especially
librarians, as teachers. Such teaching can involve formal and informal
lectures, tours and orientations, preparation of exercises either alone
or in conjunction with formal classes, online demonstrations, online
tutorials, preparation of pathfinders, and other activities. All of these are aimed toward making information
users more conscious of their information environments. The American Library Association has a number
of committees and other initiatives to support BI, information literacy,
and related efforts. One of
the most prominent of these organizations is the Association of College
and Research Libraries (ACRL) Instruction Section.
Much of the BI theory, practice, and lore have been developed
in post-secondary education, and librarians that serve in such institutions
have been leaders in the field, as are librarians that serve in K-12
schools.
Roy (2000) identifies five, non-mutually exclusive
ways to structure BI and LI:
a) Orientation
(b) Instruction
related to a course
(c) Instruction
integrated into a course
(d) Team teaching
(e) A separate,
self-contained BI/LI course.
As with the Big6, these approaches have to be based
as much on an understanding of learning theory as on an understanding
of information resources and techniques.
Those of you with special interest in helping our clients learn
might benefit from our School’s course in Bibliographic Instruction,
taught every Spring semester.
There are some superb online resources for support
of BI/LI initiatives, and among them are:
Internet Library for Librarians (2000a and b), Pastine (1999),
and UC-Berkeley Library (2000). On our own campus, the Undergraduate Library
at UT-Austin is recognized as a leader in helping its clients develop
information literacy skills (2000), while the International Rice Research
Institute (1999) is an example of a digital literacy resource for a
very specific, but heterogeneous, client group.
In engaging how and why complex information systems
frustrate the user, Borgman (2000) has a succinct discussion of usability,
an important element in the development of successful digital libraries
and technological systems. She mentions several criteria for usability,
including that technologies must be easy to learn, error-tolerant, flexible,
adaptable, appropriate to the task, and effective (p. 140). A growing number of BI/LI commentators see
usability as an important focus of BI, particularly in bringing understanding
of the users of information systems in a localized and naturalistic
setting to the design and evaluation of systems meant to serve them. A major difficulty with the Web, for example,
is that hypertext-based systems often overwhelm the user who must sometimes
struggle to identify, if not construct, cognitive signposts to avoid
being lost.
Another important theme in BI is how we
prepare heterogeneous users for success with heterogeneous information
systems. This imperative grows
in importance as digital systems become more complex and hard to use
and “as the relationship between task and action becomes more abstract”
(p. 140). Further, information professionals must support
novice users who tend to fail when faced with poor information system
design as well as experts who have finely honed strategies for overcoming
design flaws. This point underscores
the fact that domain experts and technology experts are often not the
same persons. Information professionals
are expected to be both and to help others become both.
As with literacy as a general concept, there are reasons
to denaturalize digital literacy and examine it a bit more closely.
Central to such a project is considering how and why people resist
technology. It is simplistic
and insulting to dismiss such resistance as small-mindedness or fear,
and it is incumbent on information professionals as practitioners and
scholars to understand and be able to discuss resistance in a substantive
way.
Resistance to technologies
Just as we usually do not question the desirability
or positive effects of literacy, we have a cultural habit of denigrating
those who fail to adopt the latest technologies as “Luddite.”
Sale (1995) has rehabilitated and deconstructed this term by
a close and critically informed reading of the Luddite movement.
One of the most important and earliest points of his book is
that, despite our easy assumptions to the contrary, Luddites were not
opposed to all forms of technology.
Rather, they were adamantly opposed to “’Machinery hurtful to
Commonality’” (xi). In other words, the Luddite movement fought
the kind of machinery/technology that Balabanian
(1993) implicates in his paper:
technology that dominates, severs communal ties, erodes modes
of life and mores, and destroys the ability of groups to support themselves.
Of particular interest to us are Sale’s final three
chapters: Chapter 8 “The Second Industrial Revolution”
(pp. 205-236), Chapter 9 “The Neo-Luddites” (pp. 237-259), and Chapter
10 “Lessons from the Luddites” (pp. 261-279).
Chapter 8 gives a useful overview of many of the exaggerated
and ill-considered claims of commercial IT hyperbole and of digital
technology enthusiasts more generally.
Such claims tend to intensify the oft-described and –decried
characteristics of modernity: specialization,
mechanization, centralized control, production, globalized markets,
“monetarization of worth,” the valorization of speed and efficiency,
and uniformity (pp. 208ff). These
characteristics, pace Sale,
have fed and been fed by the ability of technology and the technocratic
mindset to dominate and pervade all of society.
In Chapter 9, Sale discusses neo-Luddites who, for
him, defend human values and relationships against the encroachment
of the modern, technological imperative.
This discussion leads to his outlining in Chapter 10 of a number
of lessons from the Luddites for those who wish to play a countervailing
role against technology and its assumptions. Among these are:
· “Technologies
are never neutral, and some are hurtful” (p. 261).
As with science and technology studies (STS)
arguments, the goal is to remind us that technologies inevitably bear
the marks of their history and the culture that produced them.
Recall this theme when reading the other textbook, Nardi &
O’Day (1999).
· “Industrialism is always
a cataclysmic process, destroying the past, roiling the present, making
the future uncertain” (p. 264).
· “The nation-state, synergistically
intertwined with industrialism, will always come to its aid and defense,
making revolt futile and reform ineffectual” (p. 267).
· “But resistance to the
industrial system, based on some grasp of moral principles and rooted
in some sense of moral revulsion, is not only possible but necessary”
(p. 269).
For those of you who disagree with these statements,
please take a moment to articulate the strengths of the argument – perhaps
even to read Sale. For those
of you who agree with the statements, consider their weaknesses – in
other words, in what ways and to what extent is Sale wrong?
That is one of the goals of this course, to ask you to reconsider
your preexisting assumptions and attitudes toward technologies and what
place, if any, they should have in professional life.
The collection of papers edited by Bauer is based on
presentations made at a conference whose goal was to “overcome
the technocratic bias according to which resistance is nothing but
a nuisance in the technological process” (xiii, Preface, emphasis in
the original). Bauer (1995a)
makes a useful distinction among the elements of technology to be resisted: hardware, technology’s consequences, and the
means by which technology is deployed and used. With IT, Bauer identifies consequences as the object of resistance,
ranging from the invasion of privacy to the health risks posed by electronic
technologies to misplaced faith in artificial intelligence to political
surveillance to the de-skilling of jobs.
Bauer (1995b) focuses the argument on the weaknesses
of the concept technophobia, one example among many of our culture’s
tendency to “detect symptoms of pathology in people’s experiences of
new technologies” (p. 97). Plainly, characterizing people’s behavior as phobic betrays both
medicalization of social phenomena and serious disapproval, what Bauer
calls the “clinical model of resistance.”
He especially warns us of medicalization’s tendency, fulfilling
a role similar to that filled by religion, to help control people’s
thoughts and behavior.
More generally, Bauer says that his paper is an exploration
of the thesis that (p. 99):
the concept of “cyberphobia” epitomizes the clinical eye on
resistance to new technology. Besides providing media hype[rbole], the concept
prioritizes personal therapy over technological design. It individualizes the problem when the technology
requires more adequate (re)design acceding to social and psychological
criteria.
Among his fundamental critiques of the concept of technophobia,
in addition to its individuating and obfuscating functions noted above,
is that such a concept presupposes that deviance is inherently pathological
(recalling Foucault’s critique of “normalizing” in Discipline and Punish).
Bauer pursues this point in arguing that resistance
and disjunctions between users and systems are “normal events” that
are important resources for system designers and producers.
Such disjunctions are not simply mistakes by users or bothersome
delays to technological development and deployment.
Such normal events plainly point out the need for increased attention
to aspects of the system, support in
situ system evaluation, and help identify how a project might be
reconsidered or reconfigured. This
line of reasoning, of course, echoes the user-based
perspective that we in LIS consider all-important and our reason
for being. Bauer concludes that “the focus of analysis
is shifted from resistance as an individual deficit to resistance as
a social resource. Resistance
is the benchmark of local reality to test new technology” (p. 119).
The main theme of Nelkin (1995) is her surprise at
the lack of concern with the intrusion of IT into so many aspects of
our lives, with threats of social control and loss of privacy (however
defined), in contrast to the tempestuous history of biotechnology.
Somewhat paradoxically, the quite technical language of IT has
become part of our vernacular, and this fact is mutually constitutive
with our lack of concern with the intrusive possibilities of IT.
More specifically, “[t]o the middle class, the group most often
engaged in resistance movements, information technologies appear to
be decentralized, comprehensible and controllable” (p. 385).
Concerns about privacy, although they are shared by many, have
no natural constituencies, especially as we all enjoy the convenience
of nation- and world-wide information, credit, and identification systems. While biotechnology is hopelessly (in Nelkin’s
view) mired in discussions of risk, threat, and morality, IT seems relatively
untouched by these concerns. And
that fact puzzles Nelkin.
While much of Bauer (1995c) lies beyond our interest,
there are some themes that are germane to our discussion.
He reprises the idea that resistance is a strong signal that
things are not going well with technologies, in contrast with the technological
innovator’s view that resistance is based in individuals’ failures,
especially fear and irrationality.
Instead, Bauer reminds us that resistance encourages greater
communication, thinking, and reflection, pointing to a problem within
as well as across organizations.
Neumann (1994) cites Jerry Mander’s 1992 book In
the Absence of the Sacred: The
Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations. Mander provides ten aphorisms about technology
that Neumann warns the reader might “appear as Luddite antitechnology”
(p. 845). Given the discussion
of Sale (1995) above, Neumann’s choice of words might be better. With that said, among the ten aphorisms are
the following:
1. “Since most of what we are told about new technology
comes from its proponents, be deeply skeptical of all claims.”
2. “Eschew the idea that technology is neutral or
‘value-free.’ Every technology
has inherent and identifiable social, political, and environmental
consequences.”
3. “Negative attributes
[of technology] are slow to emerge.”
4. “The operative question is not whether it [a technology]
benefits you, but who benefits most? And to what end?”
5. "In thinking about technology within the
present climate of technological worship, emphasize the negative.
This [emphasis] brings balance. Negativity is positive.”
The fact that Neumann’s piece was published
in Transactions of the ACM, one of the leading
computer technology professional organizations, indicates that LIS is
far from the only information field that has serious, evaluative reservations
about digital technologies.
Summary
While our field has a vibrant and successful tradition
of bibliographic instruction, there are a number of questions about
the field that persist: How much should we do for clients as opposed
to helping them learn how to do things for themselves? What is the “proper” balance between technological
faith and technological doubt? How
do we help our clients develop a skeptical but informed attitude toward
information sources of all kinds? Our colleagues in K-12 and post-secondary
librarianship can be of special use to the rest of us in addressing
these questions, but, obviously, such questions are never answered once
and for all. Instead, they are
the stuff of continual professional deliberation and growth.
At the heart of BI related to digital technologies
is how to encourage novice and non-users of IT to try the technologies
and develop realistic expectations of what the technologies can do,
while encouraging expert users to be more skeptical of the power, authority,
and effects of the same technologies. In both cases, the information professional
is fulfilling a role similar to but different from one we have played
for millennia. Precisely how
to do so is the essence of one’s professional practice.
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(1993). The neutrality
of technology: A critique of
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and applications (pp. 15-40). Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press.
Bauer, Martin.
(1995a). Resistance to
new technology and its effects on nuclear power, information technology
and biotechnology. In Martin Bauer (Ed.), Resistance
to new technology: Nuclear power,
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_____.
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_____.
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