Readers of the, say, older persuasion may recall a time when children actually enjoyed games that required no peripheral devices, infrared sensors, or satellite tracking. There was one party game, simply called (I think) “Telephone,” where one player whispered a message to the next, and that player to the next, until the message was passed all the way around the circle of players. The fun came when everyone heard the amusing distortions that ended up in the final message.
In library advocacy research, though, message distortion is not amusing. I noticed a serious instance of this in a recent IMLS Research Brief which cites an American Library Association (ALA) report finding that patron use of library computers for job-seeking purposes has “greatly increased.” [Read more...]
