John Miedema

I have now finished The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating by Smith & MacKinnon (2007). In Part I, I discussed how local eating is slow in a good sense on two dimensions of food: service and quality. The food takes time to prepare but it helps build local agriculture and reduce the transportation toll on our planet. It not only tastes great, it has fewer preservatives and more nutrition. Wouldn’t everyone want to eat it always? No, it turns out, mostly because of the effort. Still, most of us don’t want to eat at McDonald’s all the time. In Part I, I illustrated the different contexts in which we make different eating choices. A similar analysis can help illuminate information services.

“Don’t make me think” is the battle cry of the digerati. Librarians begin to think that if libraries are to survive, their services must become more like Google and YouTube. I believe there is partial truth in that statement, but it is wrong to think the only direction for library services is faster. I make this point by graphing two dimensions for information:

The x-axis is Searchability, the speed with which people can find the information (not so different from Service time in the previous graph). The y-axis is Readability. The use of Readability as a second dimension is a critical point to a fresh understanding of information services. We often think of the web as the cutting edge information technology. The web, i.e., a single thing. We look for information on the web, and we read it there. Or do we? Every computer is hooked to a printer for a good reason. Many of us read short snippets on the web, but when we want to read anything of substance we print it off or obtain the book. Slow old print and books still play a vital role in information services. There is a discontinuity between finding information and reading information; they are two distinct concepts, and thus can be represented as two dimensions in my graph.

In the lower left quadrant, you see Google and a monitor. Google presents fast searching and the monitor fast reading. If I need to know the definition of a word, give it to me fast. Unfortunately, some students try to use this technique for writing essays. In Part I, I described my experience of the difference in essay writing from the late eighties and now. Sometimes it seems that I could assemble an entire A-grade paper with only copy-paste. Libraries are doing no service to students if they only pander to this quadrant of information.

In the lower right quadrant, you see a talking person and and an eBook. The eBook is another variant of fast reading. The person represents a slow version of searchability — talking to other people. Talking to others is slow, but unlike text indexes, people can share a sense of meaning that facilitates richer searching. The person in the graph appears to be blabbing; not all talk is useful, but the word on the street often contains subtle and critical truths. Talking to librarians can link searchers to five-star information.

In the upper left quadrant, you see Google and a book. The book represents slow reading. This is the ‘Hilton’ quadrant if compared to Part I. As I see it, this quadrant may represent the most important aspects of modern information services. Digital technology is excellent when searching for information*, but print is still the superior technology for reading material of any depth. Librarians and educators need to continue helping students make the transition from the search tool to the book.

In the upper right quadrant, you see the person and the book. This was the pattern of learning for centuries, and still offers value for the deepest kinds of knowledge seeking. This is a smaller segment of information services these days, and rightly so. Looking for a recipe? Google it. Looking for philosophical insight? Talk to people and read books slowly.

The graph illustrates how fast and slow both play into information services. Somewhere in the nineties, librarians began to think that everything was just going to get faster. For awhile it did. But the rush of the information age is beginning to subside. Web 2.0 represents a turning point in which progress requires engaging people more, a sort of “You” turn. As the dust clears, we see how digital technology complements traditional information seeking and learning.

* Update, December 11, 2007. Digital technology can be excellent when searching for information, so can talking with people. But combined they may turn out quite badly. See A Librarian’s Worst Nightmare: Yahoo! Answers, where 120 million users can be wrong.