Life & Time on Campus
When trying to represent social software like IM & chat to librarians, I find the most difficult part is convincing them that these are tools their users are already using. If the librarians not participating in the community, how do can I prove to them it exists? I try stuff like, ‘to many of our students, NOT being on AIM is like not having a phone number.’ But, why should they listen to me? I’m already suspect. So when some proof comes to me, I practically don’t know what to do with it.
The UNH Office on Residential Life conducts a regular survey of on-campus students - those living in dorms. I feel safe in estimating these are mostly freshman and sophomores, with a few upperclassman sprinkled in, perhaps. The survey includes a section on how many hours a week the respondent spends on a number of activites. The top three according to the Fall 2005 report are: socializing (15.8), studying - excluding classes and labs (12.5), and instant messaging (9.3). Yep, to these these students, our users, IM is the THIRD most popular activity. They report spending almost 10 hours a week doing it. The survey itself provides some proof by making a distinction between IM and ‘personal internet use - other than IM’ (8.4). When trying to convince our librarians to go where the users are, I can’t think of a better argument than that.
Tags: campus life, chat, IM, Libraries, Services, and Librarians, messaging, new hampshire, online tools, reference, Services, sms, social software, student life, unh, university of new hampshire
March 13th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
[...] Just when you thought I was done been talking about how the internet really does touch everything now, Lichen posts some details from the most recent University of New Hampshire Res Life student survey and it gets me going again. In order, the top three activities are: [...]
March 14th, 2006 at 9:51 am
Seeing is believing? All someone has to do is walk through the cluster during a busy time and see how many IM windows are open–multiple windows in some cases. You don’t even have to be obvious about it!
July 25th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
[...] Indeed, when college students are spending so much time on AIM and logging into Facebook daily, is a car really as important as a computer in a teenager’s social life? When 89 percent of students start their research in a search engine, isn’t the computer more important than a car to get to the library? [...]