Use-full Theory

At last a thorough examination of users in a practical setting was given to us in the Week 4 readings. As an archives student the articles did not speak to my interests as well as I'm sure it did others, but never before have I read such detailed descriptions of not only the motivations of users and non-users but also how they interpret/read what they see on the page or screen. The closest my studies have come to this sort of thinking were reference essays and a term paper about remote reference. All of these however dealt with figuring out patrons' indirect questions by wading through their self constructed but undefined mindscape.

Having just started to think about these sorts of things I can't say whether the Market and Resistance models are horribly deficient to explain reading behaviors but as a bachelor of history I agree it's critical to consider how libraries have come between producers and readers and shaped the development of literacy before a sound theoretical model can be found.

The Ross piece was a refreshing reminder that formats and readership have changed over millennia. Whenever people bemoan the poor quality of education of youth today I remember a patron at the Historical Society who was examining century old public school curricula and loved to point out how intelligent the teachers needed to be for such rigorous coursework. What does it matter?, I would ask him, when teachers have specific subjects as you reach intermediate and secondary schools? The sheer numbers of students would make all these specific teachers generalists, rather than lower the total number of teachers, with an increasing level of demand on their intellect. The curricula he examined were for a largely rural state without large schools like the 1500 student High School from which I graduated and therefore it was best to have the history teacher handle geography or Greek or Latin or anything else he was competent with. He utterly refused to believe that changing standards for teacher qualifications from a one room classroom era to the present had any bearing on the quality of education.

With reading its "own material logic and encourages its own particular relationship between readers and their books" and a "revolution in electronic text will also be a revolution in reading". Great quotes that one can use for madlib templates.