Live Blogging … Notes from Chris Coward’s talk at the University of Michigan School of Information’s Yahoo Speaker Series. Note: many of my notes are direct quotes from Chris’s talk or slides. I’ve tried to put those in quotations but apologize in advance for any misattributions.
Comes from international development background – started in 1990s – in area of IT and international development – ICT/ICT4D – the notion that with new technologies, we can allow people in poor communities to get better health, education, political participation, etc. – alleviate some of the issues of poverty and other ills.
Never saw the word “public libraries” in this work. PLs “absent from this discourse.”
Part of the history of public access to ICTs was the establishment of centers where equipment could be used communally. Ex: India established 100,000 “Common Service Centers” (“launched with great fanfare” … often part of larger tech rollout plans at national/NGO levels) … some have come and gone … even though they already had 45,000 libraries.
Why parallel infrastructures?
{Me: Hmmmm … have we not seen this in many, many American K-12 school districts as well, a kind of parallel siloing in lieu of a more integrated approach?}
2012 World Bank ICT for Greater Development Impact study – no mention of libraries, but several mentions of “telecenters.”
Beyondaccess.net initiative – Coward shows a map showing that there are 315,000 public libraries in the world — 73% are in the developing world?!?
A Scattered Landscape
Public access ICT research was top ICT4D research focus in the 2000s, but evidence has been inclusive; anecdotal evidence of impact; “scattered, isolated studies”; “no studies on indirect impacts or impacts on non-users”; “claims of ‘disadvantaged’ populations not being reached.” Some research showed that those using the computer centers were already more advantaged, so in some cases, the neediest weren’t being reached by the intervention. Again, very little mention of libraries as a public access point for technology.
Important Questions
So… “are public access ICT venues
- failures (not used)?
- frivolous (used, but to play games, be on Facebook, non-essential to the cause of development)?
- needed (the mobile revolution may have superceded the need for centralized desktop/laptop access)?
- irrelevant (not a big enough priority)?”
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So … meanwhile, as international groups think about moving away from public access points, a UW study showed that there are 77 million unique users of U.S. public library Internet services — U.S. use is up. (Note: users are defined as those who have used library tech in last 12 months.) This exceeds the total ticket sales for all major sports combined.
International Development Research Centre (IDRC) & Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Division of Global Libraries funded a Global Impact Study @ TASCHA (study group at UW). Studied different models of public access to Internet: libraries, telecenters, cybercafes. They wanted to know how different models had different impacts.
Very few libraries are connected to the Web. Bangladesh, for example, has 68 libraries, but only 11 are connected to the Internet. Brazil has 5,097 libraries, but 722 have access. Lithuania has 1335 libraries, almost all of which are connected (they got Gates money early on for this).
{My note: I worked in Lithuania in the summer doing educator professional development several years ago, and Blanche Woolls has spent several years working with school librarians there (note: school libraries were not measured in the TASCHA study, as they are not open to the general public, a criteria for inclusion in the study). I saw a lot of momentum to put labs in schools. Intriguingly enough, in those early implementations, I saw two interesting things: labs with computers that were connected to the web but not to a building network; and labs that still had Russian characters on their keyboards. Also, I still saw — and this is going back a decade or so — that the physical card catalog was alive and well. Note: this is not a formal sampling, just my memory of the spaces I saw in the cities I visited in my work. Also, it must be said that Lithuania is a marvelous country to visit, for many, many reasons.}
Finding: most common types of access:
- communications & leisure
- education
- employment & income
- culture & language
- health
- governance
Why didn’t people use computers for certain reasons? NEED. Not everybody has a need to look for a job or take classes or investigated health. Another reason: DIDN’T THINK OF IT.
Finding re: job searching {My note: this relates to the FCC Connect2Compete initiative here in the US}:
– 57% said yes, they used public access to the Internet to look for a job
– 89% of those who searched found info
– 91% of those who found info to apply did apply.
Also has findings re: searching for health info.
Finding: for more than 1/2 of the user survey respondents, a public access venue provided them with their FIRST EVER contact with computers & their FIRST EVER contact with the Internet
For about 33% of survey respondents, public access was their ONLY option to get online
Over 55% would see a decrease in their ICT use if public access venues weren’t available.
For acquiring skills, public access venues are more important than schools for developing computer (40%) and Internet (50%) skills. This could be because equipment time is so limited at schools in these areas that kids only get a few minutes at a time on them. The sustained time of public access venues is required to actually acquire more skills, says Chris.
So how do we go forward? More stuff for general access vs. inclusion of libraries in digital initiatives (though it might not pan out if we don’t learn from mistakes of past). Another approach, quoting Clay Shirky, “We systematically overestimate the value of access of information and underestimate the value of access to each other.” Chris takes this to mean the power of library as place where people come together. We often see public access points as places to access information (private stations; you interact with your computer but not with others in the room). Chris shows a photo of a room that is empty in the middle, with all desks facing the wall and everybody looking at the walls/screens, not at each other.
New work: makerspaces spurring innovation. iHub in Nairobi, etc. These are intentional spaces to bring people together, not have them line up around the perimeter of the room to work alone. {Me: YES! Great way to talk about makerspaces in libraries here in the U.S., too. This hearkens back to Brown & Duguid’s Social Life of Information and the importance of proximity to individual growth.}
So here is a fundamental shift from connecting people to information (via tech, access) to connecting people to one another. Fundamental shift in mission statements — you see more language about “facilitation,” “collaborative problem-solving,” “connect, share, create and find expertise.”
Chris now turns to the U.S., where makerspaces and libraries are bubbling up as well. References Fayetteville Free Library as one example.
Ghana work – over 50% come with others; they share materials because it’s more fun (31%). 75% interested in environments that facilitate group work.
Statement from the survey, “I’m confused, as I guess many people are, about what exactly a library is. But I”m a firm believer in libraries and the potential role that they can play.” {Me: Wow – this seems so compatible with the 2013 Pew study on public libraries, where there was huge support for public libraries and yet a far smaller percentage of people actually saying they used them.}
Q&A points:
- Do people in other countries want libraries to be public, collaborative spaces or quiet places for individual study? Chris says that privacy is differently defined in the countries he studied versus than in the U.S.
- Abroad, are libraries seen as places seen as locations where “educated” people go? Or are they seen as places for everyone? Chris says that there is a sense that libraries are places where you go “for school.” Some libraries aren’t perceived as welcoming.
- Libraries and gender balance? Chris says libraries have more gender balance than makerspaces/hackerspaces do. (They didn’t study hackerspaces/makerspaces.)
{What’s on my mind as this talk wraps up: how do we make this shift from “libraries as places to connect people to stuff” to “libraries are places that connect people to stuff, yes, but also to one another”? This isn’t an issue exclusive to developing nations … this is a U.S. issue, too.}