Digital Distractions Research Articles

Communication overload: a phenomenological inquiry into academic reference librarianship

PurposeThis study aims to provide insight on the meaning of communication overload as experienced by modern academic librarians. Communication is the essence of reference librarianship, and a practically endless array of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools (ICTs) are available to facilitate communication.Design/methodology/approachThis study relied on a phenomenological methodology, which included nine in‐depth interviews with academic librarians. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using RQDA, a qualitative analysis software package that facilitates coding, category building, and project management.FindingsSeven themes about librarianship emerged from this research: attending to communication abundance, librarians of two types, instruction not reference, twenty‐first century librarianship, user needs, trusted methods: filter not retrieve, and self‐impact. The shared meaning of communication overload among these librarians is that it is a problem when it detracts from or hinders their ability to assist their users.Practical implicationsFurther research should contribute to an understanding of communication as a problem when it interferes with serving the librarians' users, or to an understanding of interpersonal communication within the librarians' organizational structures and in their broader professional networks.Social implicationsResearch in popular psychology has focused on the negative impacts on productivity and concentration of living in an always‐plugged‐in environment. This research confirms that librarians should have time to work away from digital distractions to maintain job satisfaction.Originality/valueImportant work by Radford and Dervin has focused on communication with users. This study focuses on the impact of ICTs on librarians' work and personal lives.

Propagation Delay, Digital Distractions, and Meaningful Relationships [Ethically Speaking

This propagation delay is more than an inconvenience, however: it has also nearly caused absolute disaster. In 2007, scientists at NASA realized that the rover was approaching the edge of a devastatingly steep cliff at the edge of Crater Victoria. A command was immediately dispatched to stop the rover. Fortunately, the rover came to a halt at the brink of the precipice. The disparity between real time and virtual visualization caused by propagation delay almost resulted in the rover's obliteration. Within a matter of minutes, the billion-dollar rover could have become Mars' first heap of totaled rover wreckage all of this simply because of a seemingly small delay between virtual reality and authentic reality.