The Ontology of Telegraphy.

I am handing this week’s exercise over to my colleague Madhuri Bunny, Keeper of the Chocolate and Chief Telegraphs Officer, because she has a special interest in this subject. In addition, our Bunny Base Commander, dr Jeremy, is allowing us to use his ‘Linked In’ profile. (Can one be ‘Linked Out’...?)

Thank you Konnie Bunny, it is an honour to contribute to your diary. Watching younger colleagues and bunnies, I have pondered upon how they communicate. Long-gone are land-line devices for different tasks: my beloved telex machine (in a sound-proofed office), the domestic telephone fixed in the hall, with the trusty quill and telegram in reserve. I think what is happening ‘on line’ is the decline in both discussion/message boards for specific interests — discrete web-sites where one must log in — and the use of e-mail, and the growth of remaining wholly on one’s ‘Profile’ (e.g., ‘Book of Faces’), communicating by this alone. Gone is the individual e-mail. One can see why: a single site for all one’s needs!

How long will it be before that very instrument of the Devil, the ‘Mobile Phone’, merges with all other such devices to do everything a P.C. does, enabling one to be eternally on one’s ‘Profile’ on one machine, and communicating only thus? No more ‘logging in to check one’s e-mail’, carrying a separate MP3 player, etc. I shall be very interested to try ‘Twitter’ next week, because, if it does what I think, I can see how this would fit in well with such a trend. Am I alone in feeling a new pang of sentimentality at the loss of a ‘message’ — the twitch of ticker-tape, the grind of continuous (‘tractor-feed’) stationery, the list of one’s ‘In Box’ — in favour of something sent wholly within a single web-site? Sigh.

Sorry, I digress. For libraries, I regret to conclude it appears one should have such a presence. If a significant number of readers prefer to stay on their Social Web-site all day, it seems advisable to adopt it as an additional method of contact. The only disadvantage appears the sheer proliferation of such sites: like V.H.S., Betamax, and Video 2000, how can a library decide which to use? Who has the time to keep pages for Face-Book, Bebo, My Space, etc. (I had no idea there were so many!) up to date, and the more specialist sites such as Linked In?!? Indeed, what is the point of Linked In (especially to staff not paid even the average national wage!)? Surely it is just a matter of time before the more general Social Web-sites start offering such an employment-orientated service?

Thankfully, it seems one can copy most of one’s web-site, which might reduce staff labour. If one can pay for a ‘Face Book Page’ to allow ‘fans’, enrol readers thus automatically to follow the library, and combine it with an ‘instant telegraph’ message system (such as R.S.S.? Although Mari Smith says messages are sent as ‘Updates’, not normal messages), this might be the ideal communication method for those too young to have experienced the joy of a crash-manual typewriter...

p.s., I was going to illustrate this with a few pictures, but am worried they are the property of British Telecommunications, P.L.C., so you might like to browse their archive yourselves:

http://imagelibrary.btplc.com/assetbank-btplc/action/browseItems?categoryId=367&categoryTypeId=1

83656 BODLEY G