There is a deft bit of industry two-step called for in combining library service and marketing. Not surprisingly, the proficient and self-assured perform the choreography best. MySpace may be utilized by teens as a playground for practicing representation and tweaking response, but it is no place for faint or fumbling institutional posers. Libraries are not adolescents, and ought not don the trendy (but ill-fitting) garb of those whose legitimate developmental task it is to pose and parry.
It's unfortunate that "youth space" has gone virtual. In Platonic terms, adolescence is a time to exit the cave, to glimpse alone and with one's peers the awesome world without. It's a time to try to differentiate shadowed from genuine reality. Libraries have no place "fronting" in the MySpace developmental playground, but might stake a signpost to point the way toward genuine, non-mediated life experience. A link to the teen section of the library web page, which in turn provides information about events and volunteer opportunities, would suffice.
The amassing of "friends" should be eschewed; such social misrepresentation is a developmental disservice to young people. Libraries with vital, committed teen departments are far better served (and far better servants) in promoting face-to-face encounters and supporting non-virtual youth spaces. Let the teens buzz in their branded Murdochian cave, if they must, but let's help them transcend their shadow play, and discover and appreciate the tangible, transformative world of interaction with fully fleshed people and ideas.
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1 comment:
I have always loved your command of the language! It's such a pleasure to read - and forces complex thought. Thank you!
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