I love all of the concepts and controversies surrounding images, their meaning and all of the ways that this involves the way we see the world. It now seems that my academic background running as it has through education, fine art, mass communications and library science has brought me to an interesting juncture in our current electronic evolution. According to James Marcum in his 2002 article Beyond visual culture: The challenge of visual ecology,
Today we live in…a visual culture in which print and graphics, television and telecommunications, videos and movies, and computer displays…convey information of such intensity that it diminishes the dominance of speech and print media. (However)The library profession remains grounded in textual, print media, creating vulnerability amidst a culture increasingly characterized as visual (189).
I know…just what we need, another reason to predict the demise or diminishing role of the library in our society. My love for images, visual information, signs and symbols etc. does not alter my love for the printed word but I do think that Marcum is right in the sense that visual materials are often placed in a second class status within some environments including libraries. “Historically, modern society denigrates the role of the image” (191). It is not that images or visual information are not represented within the conventional library, but the perception at times seems to be that the use visual elements, on the OPAC for example, is seen as dumbing down the system. Particularly in an academic environment, users are expected to be beyond needing “pictures” to get around and therefore less in need of graphic elements to navigate. We desperately need to draw students to our systems but we are often still insisting on raising their levels of perception to print versus images in the way we choose to design our systems. It seems to me, at times, like the internal struggle in dealing with student use of Google. We denigrate it in favor of “real” resources in the library instead of working with students to integrate all sources of information into search strategies. “For the visual ecology to prevail in the world of academe requires providing intellectual access to images” (199).
I remember somewhere in my class text the example given of research that shows that the human eye is able to process thumbnail images more quickly than text-based information. This is simply the way we are wired. It only stands to reason that information retrieval systems that are more visually oriented will be more user friendly. Hence the GUI (graphic user interface). This also makes me think of Steve Krug’s book Don”t make me think: A common sense approach to web usability. It does not improve our standing within our culture if we, as librarians, let the bias against visual navigation and representation within our systems affect how we design access to our digital or electronic resources. “The idolization of language and the reduction of cognition to a processing of codes and symbols – mathematical and textual – have marginalized the study of the image” (192).
Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, is another author who comes to mind who has done much in elevating the ability of visual design or images used to represent quantitative data and to represent information in a way that is more immediately grasped by the human mind. As Marcum goes on to state,
Information must be simplified and managed into presentations that have meaning in order to fully utilize and comprehend the vast reservoirs of scientific, business, and public data that are accumulating, and a growing number of researchers are using visualization to analyze and present their data better (196)…It requires but little reflection to determine that librarians cannot leave these skills and techniques to others without jeopardizing the future of the profession (198). The rise of the digital library is an important step in the development of the library as a cultural resource. The effort remains focused overmuch, however, on text and the digitization of text for greater access. The greater challenge is to visualize the total culture, the visual ecology, in order to select wisely what should be preserved for posterity (201).
Marcum, James W. 2002. Beyond visual culture: The challenge of visual ecology. portal: Libraries and the Academy 2(2): 189-206.
