Despite the title of this post, I do indeed know what Facebook is. I'm a somewhat reluctant user however, and an occasionally inept one (due to lack of use). So I was a little stumped in class when asked to describe Facebook to a complete novice using their prior knowledge. My partner and I ended up discussing how to connect Facebook etiquette to real-life etiquette, since we were in agreement that lots of people who are on Facebook maybe shouldn't be. We discussed, for example, the illusion that Facebook is private. Yes, you can set up your privacy settings, but you should also be aware that lots of people may see things that you post without you realizing it. To connect this to real-life etiquette, we argued that you probably shouldn't post anything that you wouldn't say chatting with friends at, for example, Parents Night at school- a semi-public/semi-private event that you can have private conversations at, but probably also want to remain somewhat circumspect at.
Other students, however, took up the challenge of describing Facebook to a novice with considerably more ingenuity. We heard descriptions of Facebook as a place to meet (virtually) like-minded people, as a message board, as a place to start research by crowdsourcing knowledge, and, most intriguingly to me, a customized online newspaper created by friends posting news articles of interest. It was a fascinating look at how people make a technology work for them. I was also reminded of the folktale from the Indian subcontinent of the five blind men (or men in the dark- versions differ) who all touch different parts of an elephant, believing their part to be the whole. They are then understandably baffled when their individual descriptions differ widely from each other. The ending of the story differs across cultures and beliefs and time but the general gist is: we all only see part of the whole.
While no one got confused about the essential nature of Facebook in class, I was reminded that how we see our part of the whole really matters when we work in a library. As Kristin reminded us, library workers tend to see library security staff as people there to protect everyone at the library. Library users coming from different backgrounds may see security staff as a dangerous threat, or at the very least, people to be very wary of. We may see libraries as a place to come in and use books and computers. Users may see it as the one warm place they can come during the day. Going across international lines, we may see the rich heritage of libraries as a place of freely available knowledge, whereas users from other parts of the world may not share the heritage of free libraries, and may expect to pay for library materials. To get even broader in scope, even the essence of what a library is, is in flux. When we are unaware of our own beliefs about what an elephant (or a library) is, we can get stuck running around, arguing that our perception is the right one. Worse, when we fail to recognize our own partial perceptions, we fail to see and respond to the differing perceptions of patrons, leading to miscommunication and policies that don't address underlying issues. After all, if your perception of an elephant is that it is sharp like a sword (tusk), you will respond very differently that if you think that an elephant is thin like a rope (tail). As librarians, we need to be aware of our own perceptions and biases, and try to see the whole elephant.
I agree with your point that we need to be aware of our partial perceptions (as you say) in order to better understand how our knowledge relates to that of others. A library means many things to a variety of people. In being able to recognize how our perceptions differ from each other, I think we also open up the opportunity to more completely embrace the different attributes of an institution that we may think of as being more static in nature. In being aware of how various patrons may utilize our services differently, perhaps we gain the ability to more adequately and mindfully address gaps in the services we offer. In seeing a library as a place to access information in an efficient way, I may miss out on the necessity for comfortable chairs. But people who use a library to sit and lounge, whether that is in order to read, or chat with friends, or just have a quiet place to rest their feet, may not understand why the need for comfortable chairs is not so apparent to me.
ReplyDeleteWhat I wonder, then, is what are the ways in which we can actively invite and engage with differing perceptions?