A Longitudinal Study of the Culture of MEDLIB-L

Abstract

Librarians were early adopters of Internet technology, striving constantly to stay abreast of the tsunami of technological innovation. Often the webmasters at their institutions, they defy the stereotypical image of librarians as stern-faced shushers who shun technology. A recent search of Library Literature and Library & Information Abstracts uncovered an article describing the PACS-L list formed for and by public access librarians (1); however, very little discussion is found on the social aspects of the phenomenon.

This paper presents a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of messages on the MEDLIB-L mailing list in an attempt to follow the development of the list as it changed from the newly formed list in 1991 to a mature list in 2002. It adapts a method of classifying the messages posted to the list into categories (2). Analysis also presents a numerical count of traffic in each of the categories documenting change that occurred over time.

Key Words:

• MEDLIB-L
• electronic mail
• computer communication networks