No matter the method, these various experiments suggest that texting, like Twitter, is creeping into academic communication, a prospect some in academe’s old guard might find troubling. How might the quality of students’ research — and research skills — be affected if glib text exchanges supplanted sit-down discussions with research librarians? Between the digitization of collections and the movement toward remote communications with library staff, could it be that students will stop visiting libraries altogether?
Yes, says Joe Murphy, general science librarian and instruction coordinator at Yale University, but this doesn't necessarily portend an apocalypse for learning. The notion that texting implies a less rich exchange between a student and a librarian is false, Murphy says. As people communicate via text more regularly, they learn to do so with more efficiency, he says