Blog for 4/21

Web Accessibility

As someone who hopes to be a school librarian, I feel that one of the scariest elements in my future profession is that I will very likely be alone in what I do at my particular facility. Over the years, I have seen and worked at schools that were simply unprepared to deal with student disabilities. Many still do not offer any form of an elevator or lift service between floors. Others are unprepared to assist students who need any assistive technology more complex than a mouse. In public schools, student aides are often provided who can help with these matters. But what should a librarian who works at a nonpublic facility do?

Brophy and Craven make the assertion that “the people who would most benefit from good Web design are generally people who are blind, partially sighted, or dyslexic, and in particular those who use screen reading technology” (2007). I find that to be really quite an interesting statement. I can’t say I’ve ever really thought much about sight-challenged individuals actually using the internet. Obviously, Braille keyboards would be a necessity, as would some form of interpreting the information. Text-reading programs can assist with text-to-audio conversion, but how would someone go about reading a .jpg? I supposed that would be where an “ALT” attribute would come in. Consequently, ALT attributes are only one of ten tips suggested by the World Accessibility Initiative. Others include multimedia captions and transcripts, alternative content for unsupported features, and consistent and sensible page and content structures.

The end goal of web accessibility is one of future proofing. Standardization, understandability, and a robust level of continual currency must all be offered at cost effective prices. Obviously, this is a challenge, and an increasing amount of legislation only serves to make it more of one. This trend will most likely continue to spread outside of the US and UK as more countries adopt policies encouraging web accessibility for all users.

Resource

Brophy, P., & Craven J. (2007). Web Accessibility. Library Trends, 55(4), 950-972. (Available through the CUA libraries website)

The Web 2.0 Challenge to Libraries

I will admit that I had no actual understanding of the meaning of Web 2.0 before this semester. The name alone has always made it seem like something of an empty concept. To be honest, I would be hard pressed to coin a term more “buzzwordy” than Web 2.0. Now that I understand the meaning of it, I can’t truthfully determine if my initial thoughts were that far from the mark. As Tim Berners-Lee put it, “Web 2.0 is, of course, a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means” (Joint, 2009).

Web 2.0 is social networking. Though the name was coined as a joke, many feel that there was more truth in it than one might initially believe. Libraries, by definition and purpose, are somewhat dated. Integrating user-produced and shared media into the mix can be seen as a way of spicing things up and adding a bit of currency. The extreme popularity of internet message boards shows us that user involvement is a powerful motivator. Services like Youtube and Yelp that allow individuals to post thoughts, reviews, and criticisms are extremely lucrative.

Drawbacks to this system exist, though I would not have expected them to appear in quite the form they do. There’s the matter of who controls the produced content, for example. Additionally, there’s that element of vulnerability an institution brings in when allowing outside forces, be they users or social networking services, to access their systems. There’s also the question of uniformity versus innovation and flexibility. I think it would be safe to say that no one ever accused a library of being on the cutting edge of cultural trending, after all.  

Ultimately, I fear that social networking in the workplace will mostly be another hot button issue. Very few people are looking to post to their MySpaces these days, and this may prove to be the case as well in a few years when looking back at Facebook. But, like Joint says, you just can’t ignore a major trend because you don’t agree with it. Libraries already face the possibility of cultural extinction, and relevancy is a major asset in the digital world. If Web 2.0 can help in that area, it’d be foolish not to embrace it.

Resource

Joint, N. (2009). The Web 2.0 challenge to libraries. Library Review, 58(3), 167-175.