Digital Natives and Virtual Libraries: What Does the Future Hold for Libraries?
This paper by Yasar Tonta was presented at the International Conference on Libraries and Their Clients: Free or Fee Services Supporting Social Communication in the Digital Era, Krakow Poland at the beginning of June, 2009.
Social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn are among the most heavily visited web sites. They are used not only for social networking and entertainment but also for access to information, for learning and for carrying out professional work. Social networks commonly have Web 2.0 features, offer personalized services and allow users to incorporate their own content easily and describe, organize and share it with others, thereby enriching users’ experience. Some users tend to “live” on those social networks and expect information providing organizations to offer similar services. They want libraries to be as accessible, flexible, open to collaboration and sharing as that of social networks and heighten the expectations from such institutions. The future of libraries is closely associated with how successfully they meet the demands of digital users. Otherwise, the “net generation” or the “digital natives” grown up with the Web, Google and Facebook would see libraries as outdated institutions and “take their business elsewhere” to satisfy their information needs. In this paper, the impact of the technological convergence on information providing organizations are reviewed.
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