This paper starts with resistance in libraries but will move on to resistance to educational technology in educational settings. We do not, in the end, distinguish between the library and its location in any community. Libraries are social institutions which exist in a variety of settings. They are a technology as much as a road or language or schools are technologies. Like all technologies they have a history, a beginning and an evolution. And like all institutions they are made up of the people of the societies that they are in.

2. TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENTS

In the mid-1860s, Index Medicus, which was developed to alert military physicians to the latest medical techniques after the U. S. Civil War, was one of the earliest attempts at systematically providing full and current access to information. The card catalog with subject, author, and title tracings was first introduced at the University of Rochester in the 1880s. It was made up of some 48,000 handwritten cards. The card catalog, as a new organizational tool, did not have widespread use until the 1920s (Hamlin, 1981). Charles Cutter in the 1890s envisioned the telephone as an interlibrary loan device to obtain out of town newspapers. By 1936, the telephone was a regular tool of reference services in public libraries. In 1939, Carl Milam noted that "at least two American librarians have predicted that the time will come when a good research library will undertake to supply its patrons, on short notice, with a copy of any book which exists in any library anywhere in the world" (Musmann, 1993). A similar scheme was written about by H.G. Wells in The World Brain in 1938. A broader scheme was presented by Vanevar Bush in 1949 as "The Memex" which would present relevant information on any selected topic.

These two examples of futurism, the World Brain and the Memex, were named by Martin Gardner in 1957 as the logical extension of the work of Boole, Venn and Shannon. Boole and Venn developed algebraic logic in the later part of the nineteenth century, and Shannon is the father of modern information theory whose work was in electric circuitry and telephony in this century. Gardner points out that in the 1950s it was the Soviets who moved the furthest in beginning to gather together the contents of the world brain, at least in the area of text materials from the scientific world. Soon afterward, the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the current guardian of Index Medicus, was experimenting with using computers to search through bibliographic records in an electronic format. At the same time Lockheed, also working under a U. S. government contract, was experimenting with a similar idea. One system became Medline and the other became Dialog. Ohio College Library Center, went online in 1971 (now, Online Computer Library Company or OCLC) and soon after other consortia came into existence to allow for shared holdings information and cataloging, moving all of us closer to a world brain, of sorts. Finally, let us include the Internet and CD-ROMs and LANs to conclude with this brief sketch of library history. With these tools, and even more sophisticated indexing tools still in experimental stages, information transfer is becoming a little more like the world brain of Wells and the Memex of Bush. The missing component in these developments, of course, are the people.

From the 1860s to the present is 130 years of worklife. The past hundred years have seen significant changes in library use and service, especially through technology. A common response to change in any institution is stress, and technostress and computerphobia are significant responses when the change is automated, electronic and not in hard copy. Shifts in social patterns, too, affected libraries. For example, the profession experienced feminization and its accompanying wage stagnation.

3. RESISTANCE TO TECHNOLOGIES IN LIBRARIES

Sara Fine of the University of Pittsburgh conducted a study of librarians to learn about their level of resistance to technology. Using interviews and an index of resistance, she concluded that approximately 8% of librarians in the study were actively resistant to technology and another 12% were passively resistant. She also added that 18% of libraries' patrons were resistant to technology (Fine, 1978).

The most significant correlates of resistance in Fine's study were those related to an attitude that technology would:

• result in the loss of control and privacy,

• erode interpersonal relationships,

• replace people in their jobs, and

• replace familiar, traditional and useful library processes.

Only 23% of the respondents perceived technologists positively. Positive feelings were inversely related to the complexity of the technology. The study identified female, older individuals, those who had worked in libraries for many years and individuals whose backgrounds are in the humanities as more likely to be resistant to technology. Outside of work, few participants in the study actively read about technology, or participated in groups that dealt with technology within their professional organizations. In short, outside of the workplace there was little, or no, attempt at socializing themselves to technology.

In 1985, Fine conducted a second survey and compared the results with the 1978 survey findings. She reported that levels of resistance had not changed. In addition she concluded that the resisters in the earlier study had been prophetic about the loss of privacy. What they feared might happen actually did occur and this fact probably affirmed and enhanced people's resistance. In this second study, Fine found ambivalence to technology in almost all of her subjects. Librarians reported that they believed that technology could help contribute to more effective library use, but they also believed that the initial encounter with technology would be confusing, time-consuming and generally frustrating. For some of the librarians, further resistance resulted from their general ambivalence.

Fine (1985) identified behaviors among library staff members which indicated their resistance. Some of those indications are:

For example, a female worker may typically consider the social network of her worklife a major aspect of her job in a personally satisfying way and also in a way that satisfies socially agreed upon work goals. She might see a change in her ability to network as a possible outcome of an increased use of technology. Fine's conclusions would indicate that the woman would resist technology. We can see that threats to social networks based on increased use of technology in the workplace might also trigger resistance in institutions other than libraries, such as schools or communities.

The resistance in the library to technology is not an isolated phenomenon. Libraries and the people who work in them are part of a community that supports (or not) its existence and the purpose of the work roles of the individuals who work in them. The contents of the institutions effect curriculum and curriculum effect the contents of the library, for instance. Access to library materials then becomes a key issue for some related to the changes in library technology. And "inside the library" resisters are not alone. Administrators, faculty and students have a hundred years of significant change to come to terms with as well.

Faculty members as a specific subset group of library users were the subject of a 1995 study by Adams and Bonk. Their study indicated a range of non-use of available electronic resources. For example: 7.7% of the faculty surveyed had never used their campus online catalog; 47.0% had never used other libraries' online catalogs; and 46.6% had never used CD-ROM index/abstracts available in the libraries (Naylor, 1996, p. 125).

An even more recent study of students at two large U.S. universities showed that 12% of those surveyed did not use the online catalog as an information source (Hsieh-Yee, 1996). Seventy-three percent of the students did not use CD-ROMs and 81% did not use the available online databases. Carol Hammond's study of non-traditional students at Arizona State University West found that the non-traditional students believed there was little need for classes on electronic sources but they had a need to have someone available to help with using specific sources and to provide advice on how to do research (Hammond, 1994). These views might be typical of the on task student who is pressed for time. Hammond discovered a general feeling of self-sufficiency among their students in an environment which she characterized as a "virtual library." This was, she found, contrary to studies she reviewed. The survey did reveal very low use of home dialup to campus electronic services.

In other studies, it was found that faculty who did not use online catalogs had a tendency to be in the Humanities and that they preferred to browse the stacks (Wiberly, 1994; Mann, 1993). Similarly, undergraduates also showed a tendency to browse. The latter, it may be speculated, do so because the text is immediate, concrete and self-explanatory while a data record, paper or electronic, is abstract and involves learning the subject codes and location codes. Humanities faculty, we suspect, are searching not just for specific items but for ideas that are not yet clear to them, and therefore, cannot be sought in terminals only, if at all.

Indeed, faculty and student resistance to technology in the library is matched with faculty resistance to information technology in the classroom. This resistance is especially noteworthy since it occurs at a time when the use of technology in business, industry and homes in the U.S. has reached a record high (Blumenstyk, 1996). A discussion paper entitled "Exploring Obstacles to Uses of Technology in Higher Education" (Lewis and Wall, 1988) addressed responses to technology: inappropriateness, complexity to learn, and its distancing affect in teacher - student relations in distance education courses (social network failure). And these are also similar to the responses we saw in the librarian studies. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) announced that its members oppose courses taught over the Internet, through videoconferencing, or other technologies, unless they meet faculty members standards of quality (Blumenstyk, 1996). In addition, a draft paper from the AFT Task Force on Technology in Higher Education repeated many of the same teacher responses mentioned in the 1988 report that we mentioned earlier. The AFT draft report stated, "All of our experiences as educators tell us that teaching and learning in the shared human spaces of a campus are essential to the undergraduate experience and cannot be compromised too greatly without rendering the education unacceptable" (Blumenstyk, 1996). Similarly, in France some educators are arguing that there are a few European countries using information technology that are not engaged in education for self-sufficiency and personal cultural growth, but rather a form of training for the immediate needs in industry (Kenny, 1995).

Before readers conclude that our position is that resisters are "all heart and no head," it is necessary here to note that resistance can find an origin in both the rational and non-rational. The rational objection should be voiced. Martin Bauer in his essay on "Technophobia: a misleading conception" (Bauer, 1995) emphasized the voice of resistance to directed change as a force for improvement. He described the process of resistance as "reinventing the project" and a reflection of the "material effects of communication." Often a slower pace allows for additional experience elsewhere with technology which exposes weaknesses in design or additional views of a design's strengths. Longer term projects in which there is development of a product will experience greater resistance from users in the beginning which may then rise and fall several times, with resistance responses becoming fewer for each modification. His view, then, is that latecomers to a new technology can benefit by waiting for needed modifications to be made. Generally he feels that resistance should not be viewed as an individual's shortcoming, but it can be viewed as a "social resource" (Bauer, 1995). "Resistance," Bauer writes, "is the benchmark of local reality to test new technology." Other examples of positive results from resistance are better safety regulations in both nuclear technology and biotechnology.

Horan's experiences in developing library databases using various software programs have underscored to him the need for active participation. Discussion over even the most basic details such as button locations can help speed acceptance. Staff are appreciative of being able to craft what will be their own work areas. In the process staff members have begun to develop a greater confidence and actively seek out other resources, ie. classes and books, on how the software works. It is expected that they will take over suggesting and executing enhancements that are realistic in terms of the capabilities of the software. However, we feel it is the unvoiced resistance or avoidance that can impede and not contribute to library use.

Students, often anxious about using computers, are eager to learn about them. One way they learn is by consciously or unconsciously patterning themselves after faculty. Faculty who are non-users of an online catalog may spread, or reinforce, an existing attitude, a negative attitude about use. If a faculty member does not know how to use a piece of technology, she or he cannot answer a question about the technology or offer suggestions on its use to students. Too often when students tell those faculty that there is nothing in a library where computers are used that faculty member answers "Yes, I can't find anything there either," or they say "Try another topic." Courses whose focal point is a research paper where the selection of subjects will be best discovered in electronic sources may produce papers where the paper was written first and the facts were sought out afterward from the librarian or library staff.

Another example of adverse results might be a situation where a professor who reads the journals to keep up in the field, does not do research or explores other fields, does not concern his or herself with those electronic resources, but is capable and competent in the classroom and is revered by her or his students. A student who is graduating and is looking for work comes to ask her professor about a job description which reads in part, "must have experience in a certain commercial online service." The faculty member has never heard of such a service and he or she refers the student to the librarian. The student never got to the library to ask; perhaps someone else answered the question for her, perhaps she felt it would be too complicated to learn, or perhaps she felt since her professor did not know about the online database the requirement was not really be an important part of the job. If the professor did not know, as a model to the student, then it is something that a professional does not need to know. Similarly, students have referred to the library technology in such a way that it is clear to them that database use skills are not a requisite for anything. We think that it is clear in these kinds of incidents, roles have to be re-examined if faculty's only response is to say, "Ask the librarian." A similar outcome happens when technology is distributed to the most demanding department and away from the most fearful. Technology decisions should have systemwide participation; they should be a cultural decisions.

4. CONCLUSION

Fine's conclusions about facilitating change are that change must be marketed and change must be negotiated. Such a view would be supported by the cultural change theory already discussed. It is also supported by social cognition theory at the individual level. Howard (1994) proposes that there is an internal social cognition that is unique to each individual. That individual social cognition also responds to internal views of what reality is, how to interact with it and what it means (1994). Similarly, the social role as resource, defined by Callero (1994), also adds an understanding of the impact of change in the cognitive and affective realms of the people involved. The personal development of our many individual roles is an investment aimed at fulfilling our perceived goals in those individual roles.

Roles define the self and others, provide platforms for perspective or are used in thinking. They are used for acting and are used to achieve political ends. Callero uses the term political in the broadest sense possible, including from negotiating world peace to determining who changes a diaper. Individuals act through multiple role schemas. These roles interact internally to affect each other and these interacting roles perceive and determine an outcome. Individual views of actions are often complex. That is true whether the individual is functioning in the role of library staff person, librarian, student or faculty member.

Resistance to information technology, in some sense, cannot ever entirely go away. A technology, even if it is embedded in a culture, such as language or roads, becomes the object of negotiation. Right of way is a common topic in courts. Slang and patois, their use, the results of their use and their spread are daily topics. Whether it is MTV in India or word processing in cataloging, the issue of what it means to our daily lives must be addressed now. "Where appropriate" must evolve out of response from community perception. There are Amish communities which have accepted the use of the telephone for emergency purposes. Taking advantage of the technology without compromising culture is how resistance dissipates. Similarly, we cannot expect everyone to have high expertise in all facets of information technology. We can only hope that fear can be reduced enough to see how technology can help; if not, we can hope the fear is reduced enough to allow people to find a way to express how technology may be inappropriate.
 
 

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