I recently put a poll up about library access as it concerns children. Today I closed the poll and tallied the results and want to discuss the results. This poll was actually just one part of a larger survey I did for my English class. I will talk about both, but will start with the poll I put on here. I will attach the full results, but only one other question besides the poll question will be discussed furthermore, at the end I will discuss my thoughts.
The results of the poll were
I found these results quite enlightening. It seems as though of the people who answered my poll, (who I do not claim is necessarily representative of our country), the vast majority believe it is necessary to restrict by age. A whopping 41.38% even declared 17 year old’s should be restricted. Though a fair amount (31.03%) said there should be no restriction. These results are interesting because of the facts they imply. The ALA (American Library Association) supports the idea of no restrictions, yet these results suggest most people want restrictions despite the fact I made this poll available on the ALA Facebook page (as well as a couple other Facebook locations). But, these are not the full results of my survey. In fact this poll only represented one question from the complete survey. I will make the full results available here visa a link to the Excel worksheet below this line.
I will start with the results of the question in the poll. Which happens to be question 3.
The results not including the poll
This shows a slightly different picture. While more people still want restrictions than not, it is not nearly as big a difference in fact the amount of people supporting the no censorship policy rises to about 41.18%. To understand these results in context I’ll let you know these results were a combination of my college class and my Bible study group. A key to why these results differ may be that many of these voters were college students in their 20’s. Younger generation’s tend to be more liberal. So even though my Bible study class tends to be older people with religious beliefs, the question got balanced by my college class. (I did try to go for fairly balanced results).
Both results overall revealed a majority vote for restriction. This means combined the results are still overall favorable for restricting access. So we could say, using a couple of alternative terms, child protection or censorship is highly supported in America.
The other question I want to discuss was only on the written survey. It was “To what extent should parents make the library choice for the child”. I apologize if you find this wording awkward. I was basically asking how the responsibility for deciding what a child has access to should be divided.
The results were
parent library cooperation 13
total parent choice 4
total library choice 0
This is an obvious blowout. Between my college and Bible classes parent library cooperation was much preferred. A distant second was total parent choice. This supports the idea parents have inherent rights over their child, while suggesting libraries may have some rights. But nobody seems to think libraries are all knowing, perfect gods.
My personal views fall between the extremes. I believe some restrictions are necessary, but parents should be able to override these restrictions. Also once someone hits high school, restrictions should not effect them, unless the parents specifically say to continue them. So I guess what I’m saying is I believe in parent library cooperation in this matter with the parent getting final say. This helps protect vulnerable or irresponsible children, while providing a way for more mature children to gain access to materials at their level. I do want to provide an explanation of why I chose high school as the cut off for library choice restrictions. I believe by high school, a child has had plenty of time to learn and become mature. I believe that, in general, by high school you will either be mature or not mature and only the student has control over that, not outside sources. Having full access or being restricted at the library will rarely be the tipping point saving or dooming someone during this phase of their life. Yet at the same time, they are advancing in their education and need access to resources that may have been inappropriate earlier in life, but is acceptable now that they can psychologically handle it. So not only is it useless to censor them, it is also beneficial to give them full access.
I thought this was a neat blog on libraries so I’m providing a link to it.
https://mrlibrarydude.wordpress.com/
You may have seen my recent reblog of book suggestions. Here is some of my own. Note, I will be including diverse books for many readers, ages and interest groups.
Hunger games: Suzanne Collins
Magic Treehouse series: Mary Pope Osburn
Titanic: Gordan Korman
Glass Castle: Jeanette Walls
Horton and the KwuggerBug and More Lost Stories: Dr. Suess
Eragon: Christopher Paolini
Star Wars: Various Authors
Left Behind: Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim Lahaye
Goosbumps: R.L Stine
So Cold the River: Micheal Kyorta
Homeland: R. A. Salvatore
Some book suggestions for Christians I found on another blog.
One of the men who works in our ministry came to me a few days ago. He has determined to do more reading this year. Personally I believe this is a worthy goal for all of us! As I have done so many times to others, my friend asked if I could recommend several books that would be worthwhile to read.
Here is the list that I gave to him. Perhaps it will be of some encouragement to you as well. Solomon was accurate when he observed, “Of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). You cannot read everything. You should not. Recommendations have often helped me to know what books to read, what books to skim, and what books to avoid.
There is no substitute for the Bible. Yet books are helpful tools for personal growth. (Read more about the discipline of reading and the developing of…
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Imagine being able to store more information in less space ad being able t. sort through it faster. While searching the internet I found a wonderful new technology that can do this for libraries. The Book Retrieval Robot. According to huffingtonpost.com, robots are no in charge of collections! All links to this my references will be posted at the end of this post if you wish t read them yourselves.
I looked into this and got further explanation from popsci.com, which shed some more light on the situation. These new libraries are organizing print material by size instead of classification allowing for more room. Then robots take care of of the rest, getting your books to you and the shelf. (popsci, March 2012). In my opinion as a student of the librarian sciences, I think this is genius. This has the potential to allow for larger collections, quicker search and retrieval and happier patrons. Plus it could pave the way for even greater progress as libraries become more familiar with the idea of change. With Hunt library as an example, and my enthusiasm as evidence, I hope my readers will agree.
Hunt library has one of these systems themselves called bookBot. BookBot has the potential to contain 2 million books in its book friendly system. This is about 9 times more than if they used normal shelving! To summarize how the process works from Hunt Library’s site: It stores books in bins and when a patron requests a book a “crane” gets it. The book is the brought an “operator” that sends it to the appropriate area in the library.(Hunt Library, 2014)
With Hunt Library as an example many other libraries may soon follow suit. Libraries like this who are willing to change are a great asset to us all. They show the outside world we are not just the stuffy old ladies movies make us out to be. We are innovative machines capable of changing and causing change. Whoever said libraries are dying is mistaken, we may not look the same, but we’re stronger than ever!
For images of these fascinating devices see my Google search url at the bottom of my references.
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/huntlibrary/bookBot
I would like to give a shout out to Siobhan Reardon for being librarian of the year. Being able to do so much in your Philadelphia library with little funding is amazing.
These are the the competencies that are most important to me from this semester, why they are important to me and how I have learned them.
Describing the role / responsibility of libraries for introducing relevant tech is very important. We need to know why we do what we do in order to do it properly. Through this semesters discussion boards and blog posts, I have learned more about both what libraries do to introduce technology and why. I also have developed a sense on how to explain it myself. What I have learned in this area is we as librarians/ support staff are responsible for giving access to new technology because it helps our patrons to have access to information and entertainment relevant to our modern age.
knowing how to assist users in operating public equipment is very important. This allows us to properly educate patrons and staff on how to use new technology to get information and perform other tasks. I have learned about this through projects like the tech tools project where we made a help guide for a piece of tech.
Being able to perform troubleshooting is vital. If you cannot repair a broken item, it is useless. Also this is the field I want to get into. By reading the chapters, and by learning more about technology out of class, I have developed a sense of what can go wrong with technology. I know how to do basic maintenance on computers (defragment, disk cleanup, etc.) I also can change ink in my printer and close programs that have froze. I still have a lot to learn though and reading manuals/ FAQs should help.
Recently I made a wiki for my library tech class. I did this through Wikia.com. It was a lot of fun, yet was very frustrating. My pages main purpose was to help increase knowledge in how to use useful research tools. This included Google advanced Search, a library OPAC and Indiana Inspire. I also decided to use dogs as the running theme throughout my site and even wrote my own Encyclopedic article on them. On mine, I chose to make it so only I can edit it. This is to ensure the high quality of the Wiki.
My site is set up over 5 pages. A main page explaining what the wiki is for and contains my article. The next three are the main body pages, each explaining how to use either Google advanced search, The library Opac or Inspire. Finally the last is a suggested resource page. The final page contains books and sites pertaining to dogs. A link can be found below this blog post.
Wikis have a lot of potential for helping libraries. They could be used as teaching tools. Wikis based around certain subjects can help teach students the basics of that subject. For instance, a science wiki could help teach important formulas, and an English wiki could teach grammar. Also, a wiki could hold a library’s schedule, act as a general forum for library issues, and be a good way to disseminate other information.
A link to my Wiki
forever knowledge 