Another note: it does not speak well for the Brooklyn Public Library to have someone engaged in attacks on fellow librarians at a time when you are in a direct public appeal for support. Especially when you are combining personal jabs with poor syntax.

Again, I feel strongly that when people in our demographic talk about mobile devices, they’re talking about iPhones/Droids/etc., and what I’m saying is there’s a whole world of mobile devices that look nothing like this. Or, as my husband pointed out, rich white people have Internet on their computer. Or their phone and their computer. But internet on *just your phone* is a totally different demographic.

I could’ve sworn I saw a reference once, maybe viadanah boyd, on mobile phones as primary internet access points among some (non-rich-white) Americans as well, but I can’t find it now. Anyway. My point is. “Internet on your phone” isn’t just a first-world/rich-person phenomenon, it isn’t just fancy color touchscreens on expensive devices, it isn’t even necessarily “smart” phones at all — and in fact the nature of access and use, the principles of good design, etc. can be very different — so it’s important to me to harp on that point.

(I’m sure I could get more information on the economics of data plans too, but my husband is really *glad* to no longer be in telecoms, so perhaps it would be rude of me to trigger that particular half-hour rant.

I, for one, am hoping that someone (*coughcoughBuffycoughcough*) will write a post along the lines of “The World Without School Libraries”. Or academic ones or business/corporate ones or whatever. I cannot speak on their behalf because I have no familiarity with them.

In re internet access, I want to point out that the internet cafe model is not the only one — lots of people have their internet access via their cell phones. In our demographic we tend to think that means expensive iPhones or similar, but in fact internet access on much cheaper phones is common in lots of places (look into, e.g., mobile banking in India). So I think this is increasingly something people are getting outside of any sort of governmental structure. However (of course) the kind of internet available through a mobile phone, especially a non-smartphone variety, is much different from the kind I’m experiencing on my laptop — whole swaths of non-mobile-oriented web sites are unusable, you can’t readily integrate internet content with tools for processing it (e.g. word processing), etc. — there’s ways that mobile internet is totally transformative in many demographics, but there’s a digital divide there as well, even if everyone has some form of access. (But would people be interested in using internet cafes to get access to the software & large screen if their phone suffices for all the things they do day-to-day, even if that means their day-to-day options don’t get to include certain things? Doubt it.)

@Buffy: My experience as a student was largely without a school librarian; my elementary school (minuscule, private) didn’t have one, I don’t think my (midsize, public) junior high did (but admittedly the less I remember about that the better), and, while my (midsize, public) high school had a library, we never *used* it — not one of my classes required a research paper, I don’t think any of my classes ever went to the library, and until my junior year people’s schedules didn’t commonly include study halls so you couldn’t go on your own. (I nonetheless managed to spend some happy hours there, and regret not having skipped classes to spend more.)

(I also don’t know who staffed that library. I mean, I remember that someone did, but I couldn’t tell you about her credentials.)

So unfortunately, the world without school librarians isn’t hard for me to imagine, and I can’t say it would have made any difference to my education to have not had that library. That, of course, is an indictment of my education — in what universe is it acceptable for a high school student, especially one in accelerated classes, not to write a research paper?

By contrast the school in which I taught (small, private) has several outstanding librarians and a flabbergastingly lovely library space. It is in constant, heavy use by students who love simply spending time there — it has clearly managed to be an emotional heart of the campus. Many of my fellow teachers did not make nearly as much use of the library as they should have, but it was still integrated into lots of courses, the librarians were very helpful at pulling together resources to support lessons, the school provided grants for teachers to collaboratively develop lesson plans with librarians, etc. (And, wouldn’t you know it, the seventh graders were writing those research papers I was never expected to in high school.)

I imagine if you could plunk your legislators into that library (or, I’m sure, into yours) for a day, they would Get It. But I really can’t make an argument that anyone should’ve been funding my high school’s library. And if that’s the only experience they’ve had…you’re right, they don’t know what they’re missing. I wonder how best to communicate that. (A question that applies, really, to all types of libraries…)

Personally, I always try to focus on difficult issues without being completely all doom and gloom – overall I’m positive about what we do, and our future, but often write about the troubling stuff anwyay. Not been blogging long so can’t claim success here, but the *intent* is always to avoid the paralysing, self-fulfilling prophesy side of things… I’d love to energise rather than paralyse!