Coming of Age Online

I Found It on the Internet COMING OF AGE ONLINE Frances Jacobson Harris I Found It on the Internet COMING OF AGE ONLINE FRANCES JACOBSON HARRIS AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION Chicago 2005 While extensive effort has gone into ensuring the reliability of information appearing in this book, the publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, on the accuracy or reliability of the information, and does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions in this publication. Design and composition by ALA Editions in Electra and Futura using QuarkXPress 5.0 on a PC platform. Cover photographs: Top, University Laboratory High School (Urbana, Ill.), yearbook photographs, various years; bottom, University Laboratory High School, contemporary photography by the author. Printed on 50-pound white offset, a pH-neutral stock, and bound in 10-point cover stock by McNaughton & Gunn. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. ϱ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Harris, Frances Jacobson. I found it on the Internet : coming of age online / Frances Jacobson Harris. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8389-0898-5 1. Libraries and teenagers. 2. Internet and teenagers. 3. Internet––Social aspects. 4. Internet––Moral and ethical aspects. 5. Computer network resources––Evaluation. 6. Information literacy––Study and teaching. 7. Information technology. 8. Communication and technology. I. Title. Z718.5.H38 2005 025.04--dc22 2004030119 Copyright © 2005 by the American Library Association. All rights reserved except those which may be granted by Sections 107 and 108 of the Copyright Revision Act of 1976. Printed in the United States of America 0908070605 54321 CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS v PREFACE vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi PART I Today’s Landscape 1 Teenagers and the Library 1 2 Information Retrieval Systems: For Better or for Worse 13 3 Information Technology Meets Communication Technology 34 PART II Consequences 4 The Fallout: Intended and Unintended Consequences 47 5 From Mischief to Mayhem: Behavior 72 6 The Deep End: Content 86 iii iv Contents PART III Next Steps 7 Fishing Poles, Not Fish: Damage Control 106 8 Putting It All Together 125 REFERENCES 145 INDEX 155 ILLUSTRATIONS 3-1 Example of threading structure. 42 4-1 For some teens, any technology is preferable to no technology at all. 49 4-2 Being physically alone does not mean being virtually alone. 57 6-1 An example of domain name deception: the website “Martin Luther King, Jr.: A True Historical Examination, which is operated by the white power group Stormfront. 96 6-2 The legitimate website of the World Trade Organization. 97 6-3 This website mimicking the WTO site was created by “The Yes Men,” two political activists. 98 6-4 Image on the website of the Kingdom Identity Ministries. 101 6-5 The National Socialist Movement combines imagery from the American flag and the Nazi-era swastika to portray the neo-Nazi perspective. 102 v vi List of Illustrations 7-1 A “whois” search reveals the name of the true owner of the WTO-mimic website. 121 8-1 Results of an A9 search on klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals. 131 8-2 Home page of the Librarians’ Index to the Internet. 133 8-3 Book review on the website of Policy Review. 136 PREFACE ack in the fall of 1987, during my first week on the job at the University of B Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s University Laboratory High School, two boys climbed out of a library window onto our aged second-floor balcony and pro- ceeded to bombard the students below with water from their high-powered squirt guns. At that time the library had one computer, which we booted up from a cas- sette tape player. It connected us to a regional union catalog that students searched using a command line interface to find books in our library. Today, our students are just as likely to bombard one another with virtual flames (i.e., angry or inflammatory e-mails and instant messages) as they are with actual water. In the library, they now have access to multiple full-service computer workstations, all with high-speed Internet access and links to a wide variety of user-friendly catalogs and databases. Clearly, many things are different now than they were in 1987 (or 1967 or 1947, for that matter). Our tools and systems have changed dramatically. But other things are not so different. The teenagers who use the tools and systems are still teenagers. As a school librarian for almost twenty years and an academic librarian for eight years prior to that, I have seen many exciting developments in information and communication technology. I have also seen how teenagers have altered their modus operandi as a result of growing up with these new technologies. The pop- ular press has focused on problems that arise from the controversial digital content that teens can now easily get their hands on, including pornography and hate literature. But the focus on content misses the point by oversimplifying the com- plex issues that are involved. In my experience, the problems that arise as a result of communication technology are just as serious as those spawned by information technology. What teens do to one another online and the uses they make of technology for personal and social development are issues that have not received the attention they deserve. vii viii Preface Perhaps this lack of attention is due to the fact that, for the most part, adults do not use information and communication technology to the extent that teenagers use them. I concur with the assessment of Marc Prensky, who calls today’s students “digital natives,” that is, native speakers of modern digital lan- guages who “think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors” (2001, 1). Adults are, at best, “digital immigrants.” No matter how well-versed we become in the language, we will always retain our accents. In the classroom and in the library, digital immigrants and digital natives operate on different time clocks. Digital immigrant teachers hold on to sequential structures of instruction––lectures, step-by-step lessons, “tell-and-test” approaches––but their native audience thrives on multitasking and immediacy. Many digital immigrants believe that digital natives have short attention spans precisely because of all their pointing and clicking. But perhaps natives choose not to pay attention because their immigrant instructors do not make lessons worth paying attention to compared to everything else they experience. On the other hand, when have teenagers paid attention when they did not feel like paying attention? Most teens interact with today’s technology tools in profoundly different ways than their elders, but fundamentally, teenagers can still be counted on to behave like teenagers. While we must respond to the importance of digital technologies in their lives, we cannot ignore the people they are inside, as well as the people they are becoming. As institutions, libraries have not stood still in response to the technology tidal wave. The library used to mean “The Library”––a physical structure, a place to store books, a destination. Almost all the information within it had been vetted and selected. Teaching library use was a matter of explaining the organization of resources and the various search protocols and rules. Now, in an information world that seems anarchic, the instructional work of a librarian is part Sherlock Holmes and part Indiana Jones. Where we used to point out the differences between magazines and journals, we must now also teach that there is a difference between fraudulence and honesty, between mindless ranting and erudite pun- ditry. Only then can we begin to talk about such traditional nuances as the differences between self-publishing, editorial review, and peer review. Librarians are also becoming ethicists and counselors. The increasing conflu- ence of information and communication technologies has permanently altered the nature of a career once focused primarily on information organization and retrieval activities. Teens use the technologies as much for personal development as for the purposes intended by their inventors. Librarians must heed the negative ways teens choose to use the technology at their disposal, as well as the unpleas- ant experiences they may endure at the hands of others who wield that technol- Preface ix ogy. It is no longer sufficient to teach our well-worn lessons on intellectual prop- erty rights and plagiarism. Now we must also educate students to protect them- selves online, as well as to become responsible users of information and communication technologies. This book examines the significance of coming of age in a world in which access to online information and communication tools is a fact of everyday life. I explore the impact of this phenomenon and what it means to librarians and teachers, addressing thorny underlying issues in ways that I hope will help us think not only about what we do but also why we do it and where we want to go next. Such musings are now possible because, at least on good days, the technology finally works. We have moved beyond the most painful stages of testing and troubleshoot- ing our systems. Internet access no longer grinds to a halt when an entire class tries to go online at the same time. Now we need to decide how best to deploy this technology in support of learning in our institutions. We have already come a long way. Our professional literature is replete with how-to manuals for teaching with technology and running technology-based libraries.

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