I’ve been sitting in on Open Work Time every Tuesday at the EL PC Center hoping someone would ask me a simple question; one that I could answer — a simple confidence booster. But it never seems to happen. I began using computers and the Internet in January when I started the MLIS program and while I have been learning a lot, it still is not natural to me. So much is new that I have been trying not to drown in all of the jargon, trends, new applications — what they mean, what they are, what they do, etc., etc., that seem to demand my attention and participation.
The users at the PC Center, just from a quick scan of the room, vary in age, ability and interest. Some older folks are obviously more fluent than some of the younger patrons, but these older folks have become recognizable as regular users of the free time in the library. One older gentleman watches YouTube videos every week for the entire time I am there. Many of the younger patrons are on MySpace. Today, one woman, who seemed to be in her twenties, wanted to scan some baby pictures and post them to MySpace. She had never used a scanner, never been on MySpace (someone, a friend?, had created an account for her), and had never uploaded an attachment.
After the librarian had shown her how to scan her images (eight of them), she left the patron until she was ready to upload them to her account. The librarian had never used MySpace before (so that made three of us) and when it came time to upload the scanned images there was one problem after another. The problem was probably the computer which kept freezing up. The librarian said it was probably the website, too many people probably trying to access it at the same time. (?) The woman kept getting phone calls all this time and was apparently supposed to be somewhere soon. Eventually, the librarian went out to the circulation desk to grab an employee who was familiar with MySpace. He looked at the problem and said the computer froze up and needs to be restarted. We restarted the computer, etc. and the same thing happened. The librarian told her the best thing was to email them to herself and then try again at another time. And so, after all the trouble and waiting for unsuccessful attempts to upload the images to MySpace, it was abandoned for email.
The attempt to upload the images to an email took an extremely long time but the patron was patient despite the continuous phone calls. When the eighth photo had finally been added, she tried to send the message but was told the message was too large. We removed one image and hit send — the same result. We deleted another picture; again, the message was too large. After the third deleted image and “too large” message, the woman gave up. She canceled the message and left quickly. The images left on the desktop were deleted by the librarian who said to me: “Some people who have never used these things before think they can come in and do things quickly . . . it takes time.” Seemed to me a big waste . . . all the effort and she left with nothing. After that experience, I would not be surprised if she has given up.
