{"id":19,"date":"2026-06-28T15:11:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T15:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/gigalinked\/?p=19"},"modified":"2026-07-07T01:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T01:43:08","slug":"hyperlinked-ideals-vs-realities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/gigalinked\/2026\/06\/28\/hyperlinked-ideals-vs-realities\/","title":{"rendered":"Hyperlinked Communities: Ideals and Realities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The hyperlinked library, as Michael Stephens described it in Wholehearted Librarianship<\/em>, envisions “wide-open libraries, libraries doing outreach and partnerships and becoming a real part of their community” (Stephens, 2019, p. 78). In The Heart of Librarianship<\/em> he makes the charge specific: “Who doesn’t use the library? Who in your community could benefit from access, services, assistance? Find them. Go to them, ask them what they want and need” (Stephens, 2016, p. 41).<\/p>\n

I spent my first year in a middle school library watching students cluster around single screens in groups of three or four, one driving, the others watching and occasionally taking over, knowledge moving through the group without any adult organizing it. The range within a single cluster was wide enough that one student was teaching while another was still learning to navigate the browser. Jessamyn West, writing in 2014 about the digital divide, observed that in connected environments “<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Trust builds before engagement does, and in a school the conditions for it are structurally different from anywhere else in the building. The librarian doesn’t grade you, doesn’t control your schedule, isn’t attached to any department. Within two weeks of starting at my school, students had come to me with things they hadn’t brought to teachers or administrators. Lynn Silipigni Connaway’s 2015 synthesis of OCLC user behavior research found the same pattern: “if they know us and trust us, they will seek us out when they need information and they will recommend us and our services to others” (Connaway, 2015, p. ii), with users citing rapport as the deciding factor even in interactions where they left without an answer.<\/p>\n

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Trust accumulates through small decisions about what the library is willing to be for people. Saying yes to the group sharing a screen, yes to the study group that becomes something unplanned, yes to the request that has nothing to do with books extends the library’s position into parts of the community it hadn’t reached yet. The student at the edge of the cluster who never would have walked in on their own has already been reached.<\/p>\n

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References<\/strong><\/p>\n

West, J. (2014). 21st century digital divide. librarian.net. http:\/\/librarian.net\/talks\/rlc14<\/a><\/p>\n

Connaway, L. S., comp. (2015). The library in the life of the user: Engaging with people where they live and learn.<\/em> OCLC Research. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.25333\/C3SP9X<\/a><\/p>\n

Stephens, M. (2019). Libraries in balance. In Wholehearted librarianship: Finding hope, inspiration, and balance<\/em> (p. 78). ALA Editions.<\/p>\n

Stephens, M. (2016). Reaching all users. In The heart of librarianship: Attentive, positive, and purposeful change<\/em> (p. 41). ALA Editions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The hyperlinked library, as Michael Stephens described it in Wholehearted Librarianship, envisions “wide-open libraries, libraries doing outreach and partnerships and becoming a real part of their community” (Stephens, 2019, p. 78). In The Heart of Librarianship he makes the charge specific: “Who doesn’t use the library? Who in your community could benefit from access, services, … Continue reading Hyperlinked Communities: Ideals and Realities<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":846,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/gigalinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/gigalinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/gigalinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/gigalinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/846"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/gigalinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/gigalinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/gigalinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/gigalinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/gigalinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/gigalinked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}