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Small Libraries and the Digital Divide



the information poor and the information don't care

Jessamyn West
www.librarian.net/talks/wla2

03nov06




Two Populations

1. The information poor. you may be providing their only access to technology and must act like it
2. The information don't care. technology adoption is more a management issue than the money issue that it is often described as

[public library photograph]


The Digital Divide Contains Multitudes

People don't use computers for many reasons, we have the information poor and the information don't care in Vermont.
informational table     [public library photograph]
source: Vermont Telecommunications plan


Who Are These People?

Yes, that line near the bottom says "never heard of." [informational table]     [public library photograph] source: Vermont Telecommunications plan


And Where Do They Live?

[public library photograph] source: Vermont Telecom. plan, Burlington Free Press



And It's Not Just Vermont

[public library photograph] The Pew Digital Divisions survey splits users into three loose categories: Which category do your staff fall into? Your users? You?

source: Pew Digital Divisions report



What do we know about the "truly disconnected"?

[public library photograph]

The question was "Do you use the Internet at least occasionally" and "Do you send or receive email at least occasionally?"
source: Pew Digital Divisions report


What else do we know about the "truly disconnected"?

[public library photograph]

We don't see some of these same division with cell phone usage. Why?
source: Pew Digital Divisions report


A Few Anecdotes

[public library photograph] Large public libraries in small states, my experience. Who do we have for leaders?
DoL, Microsoft, local wifi initiatives, education folks?


Management v. Money (myths)

[public library photograph] The tech dilemma is a management issue disguised as a money issue. we're entering the age of multiple right answers. managing smart people "how can I provide you the tools you need to do an awesome job?" What do we think we know?

[more myths]


A Jamesian Genuine Option, New Tools

[public library photograph] anecdote about jenny and michael's talk "how am I going to find time to do any of this? Plan for... [what if we DO this? what if we DON'T]


Applied to: Public Access Computing

[public library photograph]



Applied to: Social Software

[public library photograph] blogs and chat and rss and wikis, but also MySpace, Flickr, del.icio.us, ning, and mashups and FOAF and more...



Upshot?

[public library photograph]
"I don't know what it will be like to have books from our libraries injected into our culture again, but I'd like to see it"



« credits »

Jessamyn West is the editor of the weblog librarian.net and the co-editor of Revolting Librarians Redux. She works as a community technology mentor with people and libraries in Central Vermont, teaching email to seniors and making tiny websites for tiny libraries. IM her at iamthebestartist.

This presentation was created in HTML using CSS. There was no PowerPoint involved in this presentation except as a nagging bad example. The layout and stylesheet are available to borrow via a share and share alike creative commons license. See source code for details.

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