As I mentioned in my posting on social psychology for librarians, people tend to follow the “central” route of attitude change only if these three conditions are present:
- Relevance to audience;
- Audience has knowledge in the domain;
- Audience has sense of personal responsibility.
I suggested that items 2 and 3 are weak among documents librarians who hear messages about the importance of building local, but Internet accessible digital collections of government documents like UNT CRS Reports Collection.
A new article:
Hendrix, Dean.
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Knowledge, Use, and Attitudes of Academic Librarians
portal: Libraries and the Academy – Volume 7, Number 2, April 2007, pp. 191-212
Link to Abstract
seems to show that lack of knowledge is part of the problem. This article documents a survey of 162 academic librarians and finds in part:
Overall, academic librarians demonstrated low knowledge levels (mean quiz score = 49 percent), rarely used P2P applications, and exhibited indifferent attitudes (total neutral responses = 42 percent) toward these burgeoning information technologies.
Considering that LOCKSS is a P2P technology, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that the mostly academic documents depository community doesn’t quite grasp the power of the P2P approach.
But we don’t have to stay unaware of such technologies. Here are a few things you can do to become aware of what’s available and what it can do:
- Read James R’s P2P Backgrounder
- Check out our Digital Libraries Technologies Page
- Read LOCKSS for Librarians
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