Is it time for libraries to take a closer look at emoji? The data deluge column
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-04-2018-0022 |
| Pages | 5-9 |
| Date | 02 July 2018 |
| Published date | 02 July 2018 |
| Author | Donna Ellen Frederick |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library technology,Library & information services |
Is it time for libraries to take a closer look at
emoji? The data deluge column
Donna Ellen Frederick
The emoji, is it an endearing image to add
to your text messages and email, or is it an
increasingly important type of electronic
data? According to a 2013 article by Jeff
Blagdon, the idea of using some sort of
symbol in electronic communication has
been with us for about two decades.
Japanese in origin, the earliest symbols of
this type were developed in the era of
pagers and old-style cell phones and were
commonly called emoticons. The
emoticons were created by using the
characters available on the typical
QWERTY computer keyboard. Readers
likely are familiar with this type of
representation which included the famous
smiley face, which is created by using the
colon and closed parentheses keys. As
devices developed a greater capacity to
display graphical elements, these
keystroke representations were replaced
with Unicode characters which display on
our electronic devices, which we now call
emoji. This instalment of the data deluge
will look at the emoji as a form of data
and explore how and why their ubiquity
may create new opportunities for
libraries.
Some readers, as well as the author
of this column, may be tempted to scoff
at the idea that the emoji is anything
more than a form of shorthand for use in
electronic communications or cutesy
decorations. However, each time a
technology-related issue is dismissed by
her or others, this author is reminded of
when she took an evening class in
school library administration in 1987.
One night she showed up at the class,
and the instructor wrote on the board,
“Computers in school libraries: A new
tool or a flash in the pan?” He went on to
warn school librarians to not be dazed
by this “new computer phase” which he
felt distracted both teachers and
students from the real work of teaching
and learning. He felt that if there were
computers in schools, they only
belonged in the mathematics classroom
and that, even in that context, they only
had limited application. The instructor
felt that the sooner teachers “got this
computer thing out of their system and
got back to the real job of teaching”, the
better for everyone. She also recalls
how the students from that class
discussed the instructor’s assertions
about computers in libraries during their
coffee break. There was definitely a
generational divide among the students
whereby the middle-aged students were
more likely to agree with the instructor.
Three decades after the fact, it is hard to
imagine libraries without computers.
However, all those years ago, the fact
that computers would be an integral part
of libraries today was not generally
accepted. So, today’s night class
instructor may ask the question, “The
emoji: A useful tool for librarians or just
a happy face on a pair of socks?” The
author spent the past six months or so
exploring this question to discover that
perhaps it is time for libraries to start
looking at the emoji as a potentially
useful communication and data format.
In the 22 September 2017 edition of
the Times Literary Supplement, Andrew
Caines published a review called
“*Hopeful face*: Why the rise of the
emoji might not spell the end of
civilization”. His review discusses three
new books. The titles are The Emoji
Code: How smiley faces and loving
hearts and thumbs up are changing the
way we communicate by Vyvyan Evans,
The Semiotics of Emoji: The rise of
visual language in the age of the
internet by Marcel Danesi and Tales of
literacy for the 21
st
century by
Maryanne Wolf. In his review of these
books, Caines skilfully knit together a
new view of the emoji and what it may
mean for the future of language,
communication and literacy. In this
view, the emoji is a visual sign of how
communication is changing in the
digital age, and it is also driving change.
Undoubtedly, readers of the review
would accept that emoji has the
potential for adding emotional depth
and meaning to electronic messages
which otherwise are prone to
misinterpretation because of the lack of
visual and audible clues related to
emotion. However, what struck the
author of this column were discussions
around how emoji may be developing
along the same path as cuneiform or
hieroglyphs. Juxtaposed with the idea of
emoji developing into a new symbolic
language which could potentially stand
on its own was Caine’s demonstration
of how attempting to translate full
sentences into emoji images may not be
completely successful. The review
contains a graphic that showed the
thumbs-up emoji followed by the time
emoji which was followed by a thumbs-
down and another time emoji. Because
these images were preceded by a
discussion of a list of famous first lines
from novels, the author of this column
was able to immediately recognize that
the emoji statement was “it was the best
of times, it was the worst of times”.
However, when her husband looked at
the same emoji out of context, he
commented that the meaning was
obscure and could be anything from
being on time or late to having a good or
bad time. In addition, it is not clear
whether the string of images
represented a statement or a question.
Before reading this review, the author
had not thought seriously about emoji,
but the points made by Caines drew her
attention to the idea that emoji may be
an important presence in electronic
communication and may possibly be a
new form of data.
The holiday shopping season came
not too long after the author read
Caines’ review. With an increased
attention to emoji in terms of where
they are found and how they are used,
the author could see that emojis were
LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 5 2018, pp. 5-9, V
CEmerald Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/LHTN-04-2018-0022 5
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