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“Inspiring the Technological Imagination: Museums and Libraries in a Digital Age”

This is the first of several postings that will report on the literature review conducted as part of the project: “Inspiring the Technological Imagination: the Future of Museums and Libraries in a Digital Age.” Funded by the MacArthur Foundation this project addresses one of the four key questions that defines the Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning initiative:  How might institutions change to take advantage of the learning opportunities provided by new digital media? The work discussed here seeks to contribute to the development of a field in new media and learning by focusing on museums and libraries as important learning institutions.


Getting Started:  Blogging Scholarship

In discussing the organization of this literature review—as it serves as one of the deliverables of the MacArthur grant—the research team investigated the conventions of “blogging” as a mode of scholarly communication.  Inspired by the efforts of Mimi Ito and her research team in creating the Futures of Learning blog, we came to appreciate the emerging conventions of scholarly blogging, such when to use web links, embed dynamic media, and add typographic flourishes.  One of our greatest challenges was designing the organization of the series of blog posts such that each post could be read individually and make sense as a “dispatch,” but would also contribute to the overall report on the year-long investigation.  The initial scope of our research activity—to review the literature that describes the digital media practices currently used in libraries and museums—was extremely broad.  Although these institutions share many common interests in serving their various “publics” through the use of digital media, they also have significant differences in terms of their cultural mission, of modes of public access, and levels of resources (for example).  While we want to encourage the cross posting of insights and experiences with digital media among institutional contexts, we decided for the purpose of this blog series to separate our discussion of the literature and practices of libraries from those of museums.  (For an informative discussion of the history and futures of collaborations among libraries and museums see:  Dilevko and Gottlieb, The Evolution of library and Museum Partnerships, 2004)

We address multiple audiences with these postings: we are keenly interested in communicating with museum professionals and library professionals, but also with digital media and learning researchers, design researchers, technologists, humanists, and other cultural workers who are interested the role of museums and libraries as learning sites in a digital age.  We recognize that some of these audience members are extremely knowledgeable about the use of new digital media practices, not only in libraries and museums, but in other learning contexts as well.  This is one of the exciting developments of the use of blogs for the communication of scholarly research: every posting creates the opportunity to expand the research effort through the feedback of readers.  This truly makes the scholarly blog an example of what John Seely Brown famously described as a “living document.”

Not surprisingly, what we discovered during the literature review effort is a range of documentation of these discussions:  there are books of course that address relevant issues, but because of the emergent nature of digital media and learning efforts in the context of the development of Web 2.0 applications, recent discussions are not often documented in print form.  So, unlike a traditional literature review, this series of blog posts will also discuss practices and activities that are not published in traditional print formats.  In some posts we include references and links to particular institutional activities—such as the development of websites—to illustrate specific ways in which museums and libraries are creatively engaging digital media.  In this case, references to the online activities of specific institutions are not offered as case studies or even best practices; they are described as noteworthy illustrations of new efforts that we “read” as part of our cultural review of the development of digital media practices for learning.  Blogs then not only offer the opportunity to reconfigure conventions for the circulation of scholarship, but also offer the opportunity for reconfiguring the genre of the literature review to include reference to and discussion of other modes of expression.

Indeed, finding an appropriate and “comfortable voice” for this form of scholarly communication was a significant part of the authoring/designing work involved in creating these blog postings.  Individual research team members will author or co-author each posting, and when possible will make reference to earlier postings.  Although the entire research team collaborated on the overall outline and trajectory of each posting, the individual author(s) will determine the tone and voice employed within a specific post.

This initial post offers an overview of the general context for the project including an introduction to some of the key theoretical notions that were explored in the course of the year long research effort.  I begin with a brief elaboration of the title of the project: “Inspiring the Technological Imagination” before launching into a discussion about the framework that guided specific research efforts to find relevant literature and practices.  Because the initial scope of the project was deeply informed by the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning (DML) initiative, I provide a brief review of some of the defining claims of that initiative.  The end of this posting includes a table of contents for the other blog postings that will appear over the next several weeks.


The Technological Imagination Defined

The MacArthur sponsored project, “Inspiring the Technological Imagination,” grew out of a recently completed (but not yet published) transmedia book project called: Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work (Duke UP, forthcoming).  (An early excerpt was published in 2005 as “Taking Culture Seriously: Educating and Inspiring the Technological Imagination.”) In this project, I define the technological imagination in the following way:

A character of mind and creative practice of those who use, analyze, design and develop technologies.  It is a quality of mind that grasps the doubled-nature of technology: as determining and determined, as both autonomous of and subservient to human intentions.  This imagination embraces the fact that all technologies have multiple and contradictory effects.  This is the quality of mind that enables people to think with technology, to transform what is known into a set of possibilities, and to evaluate the consequences of possibilities from multiple perspectives.  (Balsamo, forthcoming)

It is not appropriate here to elaborate the details of this transmedia book project. Suffice to say that the MacArthur grant was designed to explore the notion of the development of the technological imagination within the context of libraries and museums.  The broader argument is that the technological imagination is a key sensibility of lifelong learners who reside in the 21st century.  As such, this imagination needs to be explicitly cultivated and, more importantly inspired.  The transmedia book project, Designing Culture explores (and presents) a range of digital projects that were designed to address and inspire this imagination.  Several of these projects involved the development of new museum exhibits and public interactive experiences.  Thus the title of the grant “Inspiring the Technological Imagination” reveals the more specific focus of our investigation into the use of digital media in museums and libraries:  to study how these cultural institutions might utilize digital media for the purposes of cultivating and inspiring a particular mode of imaginative engagement with technology that is simultaneously critical and creative, informed by the histories of technology as it also is engaged in the practice of imagining technological futures.  Investigating how this imagination is cultivated in the context of museums, especially science and technology museums/centers, was a key point of connection between the transmedia book project and the MacArthur DML initiative.


Stakes in the Ground: New Spaces, Identities, and Learning Practices

For many young people learning no longer happens within a specific physical location—the formal school classroom or the after-school program.  While this may have always been true to some extent, learning places now include domestic (home) environments and various school locations, and also recreational facilities, religious centers, and cultural institutions (to name a few).  Moreover, through the use of digital media, homes and schools provide digital access points to websites created by cultural institutions and entertainment companies that sponsor on-line learning activities.  Since the advent of the WWW, the physical “place of school” has given way to a proliferation of online “educational places” that create entirely new “spaces for learning.”

French sociologist Michel deCerteau (1984) makes a poetic distinction between “space” and “place” when he writes:  “a space is a practiced place.” A place has stable boundaries and a fixed location; a space is created in time through actions and practices.  In this sense, school is a place; and learning is a spatial practice.  This insight is not merely theoretical.  It captures something important about the nature of learning in a digital age.  Through the use of the Internet, educational places are now part of broadly distributed digital learning spaces.  When learning design researcher Katie Salens provocatively asks “where is school in a digital age?” she invites us to shift our thinking about education from a focus on the “physical place of school,” to a consideration of the “nature of learning spaces” that emerge from the digital connections among physical places, virtual environments, and mobile practices of access and interaction.

In keeping with this insight, one of the key “stakes in the ground” established by the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning projects describes the space of learning (in a digital age) as a networked distributed learning environment (space) that is comprised of several elements:  1) physical places; 2) virtual places; 3) designed learning activities; 4) opportunities for social interactions; 5) information resources; and 6) access entry points.  The diagram below represents this space as a network that is created through the connections among different physical locations (home, recreation, school, after-school, museums and libraries).  These physical locations are represented as nodes within the learning network.  They are distributed geographically as well as temporally.  Temporal distribution means that although they are always part of the network by virtue of their web availability, the nodes are accessed and experienced by learners at different times as part of their travels through the mesh of digital sites.

Several projects in the DML initiative focused explicitly on specific nodes within (this model) of a networked distributed learning environment.  The following is a partial list of DML projects that investigate the use of digital media in schools, after-school programs, in the home, and as part of youth leisure and recreational activities.  Henry Jenkins’ New Media Literacies Project identified the core skills that comprise literacy in the 21st century.  This work guided the development of curriculum for schools and after-school programs.  Katie Salens is working on the creation of Quest to Learn, a fully accredited public school (6-8th grades) in New York City that incorporates game-based pedagogies.  Nichole Pinkard, the Director of Technology at the Center for Urban School Improvement at the University of Chicago, is PI on a multi-year project to develop an after-school curriculum and program to foster new media literacy.  Mimi Ito, now a research scientist at the University of California at Irvine, designed and directed an extensive longitudinal (3-year) ethnographic investigation of how youth participate in digital media in the home, through mobile devices, and as part of online recreational (game-based) communities.  These projects were instrumental in establishing a set of understandings not only about how young people engage digital media, but also about the way in which digital media can enhance learning.  These projects also suggested new research questions:  1) how must institutions change to address the changing nature of knowledge creation in a digital age ; 2) how should learning environments be designed to address new forms of digital engagement; 3) what kinds of sensibilities emerge in the young people who grow up in digital environments?

This diagram provides an abstract approximation of the structure of a networked distributed learning environment; it is less useful in communicating the dynamic nature of the environment and identifying those who travel through it. The network is never static; it is animated through the practices of access, use, retrieval, storage, and creation.  People activate the network through their communication practices with other people (with peers, with adults, with geographically dispersed community members), with applications, and with digital agents.  They engage in these practices not only from fixed places that provide access (such as homes and schools), but also increasingly while they are on the move through the use of mobile communication devices.  So even as this diagram calls out the important physical nodes within a networked distributed learning environment, it must also be understood that the environment is constituted by dynamic flows of interaction among people, between people and computers, and among digital devices.

The people who participate in a networked distributed learning environment manifest a host of new identities.  They are simultaneously users of computer systems and creators of a learning experience. In Henry Jenkins’ (2006) words, they are productive consumers, prosumers who simultaneously produce digital experiences as they engage in the consumption of digital applications, services, and environments.  The formation of a singular identity, gives way to the notion of shifting multiple identities.  Teachers have to become learners so that they can better understand how to facilitate learning in these new digital environments.  As students participate in peer-to-peer networks, they become teachers, not only for their peers for often for adults as well.  The old distinctions between online and offline are blurred; the very notion of “identity” is under revision.

Although there is no age limit on those who participate in networked learning environments, most of the MacArthur Foundation DML projects focus on the learning experiences of a category of young people who have been variously named “digital natives,” the “born digital generation,” and “digital youth.” Faculty researchers from the Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (2008) offer this snapshot profile of the digital native:

They were all born after 1980, when social digital technologies such as Usenet and bulletin board systems came online.  The all have access to networked digital technologies.  And they all have the skills to use those technologies (p. 1).

“Digital natives,” as Palfrey and Gasser assert, “live much of their lives online” and in so doing challenge traditional notions of identity as “singular,” “fixed,” or tied to an embodied persona. There is little separation between the creation of an online identity (that might happen through the design of an avatar or game character) and the embodiment of an offline identity.  For digital natives, identities are fluid moments of experience that are expressed as they participate in online spaces; this participation is often part of a practice of rapid attention shifting.  Online is a ubiquitous quality of embodied life.  This observation about the changing “nature of identity” of digital natives leads Palfrey and Gasser (among others) to rethink notions of the “self,” “sociality,” and of “learning” more broadly.  Identity, for digital natives, is multiple and mutable.  Palfrey and Gasser speculate about how this changing notion of identity influences our understanding of the process of cognitive development in young people.  Digital natives process information differently, which in turn, influences the dynamics of concept and knowledge formation.  In another context, “the born digital generation” have been described as “just-in-time learners” who have learned first and foremost that when they need to know something they can always “Google it” (Anderson and Balsamo, 2008).  Knowledge for digital natives is not as much “learned” as it is “harvested” and “synthesized” from the information flows they visit and travel through on a daily basis. Palfrey and Gasser describe their practices of knowledge construction as an iterative multi-step process that involves: 1) “grazing,” 2) a “deep dive,” and 3) a “feedback loop” (p. 241).  Of particular interest for the purposes of the libraries and museums project is the nature of the “feedback loop” activity.  This is Palfrey’s and Gasser’s term for the activity whereby a digital native engages with the information in a creative way by (for example) posting critique on a website, contributing to a wiki page, creating a podcast or a YouTube video, or disseminating the information to friends and network companions.  The key dynamic captured by the notion of the “feedback loop” is the sense of participation:  the learner actively engages with the information to do something else with it.  It is not merely “memorized,” although it may indeed be “remembered,” rather it is actively woven into a set of meaning making practices that (might) involve the use of digital media (podcasts), authoring environments (wikis), and/or networks (e-blasts and blog posts).  Participation is the foundation of learning within the context of a networked distributed learning environment.  This is the key building block in the use of digital media in libraries and museums as they invent new ways to contribute to learning in a digital age.


Libraries and Museums as Specialized Learning Nodes: The Focus of this Blog Series

The projects mentioned in the previous section provided a general context for the design of the “Inspiring the Technological Imagination” research effort.  Our more specific focus was to contribute to discussions about how libraries and museums might incorporate new digital media for the purposes of enhancing informal learning in a digital age. These cultural institutions have important educational missions, and through the use of digital media they are already making significant contributions to the learning experiences of digital youth.  Our goal in this literature review was to delve into the context and the key issues under discussion by library and museum professionals about the use of digital media in their respective institutions and to make the connections between these conversations and the insights from the MacArthur DML initiative.  Thus our blog postings will summarize key reports, resources and discussions that address two guiding themes:  1) the relationship between the use of digital media within libraries for the purposes of broadening participation in digital culture; and 2) the use of digital media in museums for the purposes of informal education. As mentioned earlier, we separate the discussion of these topics to focus first on the use of digital media in community libraries, and then on the use of digital media in museums.  We know that there is much to be learned from the practices going on in each setting that would be valuable for professionals in other settings.  The discussions are separate only for the purposes of organizing insights and archiving the literature review. 

The last blog postings look to the “edges” of digital culture for insights about the future contribution of libraries and museums to the inspiration of the technological imagination.  A third theme of the literature review thus focuses on the notion of tinkering as a mode of knowledge production, specifically to investigate the role of tinkering in the creation of cross-generational community relationships and as a context for the development of lifelong (informal) learning habits. This part of the research was informed by the theoretical assertion that “tinkering” is an important mode of knowledge production in a digital age because these practices 1) enable important cognitive developments, 2) engender social and cross-generational face-to-face community-creating relationships, and 3) cultivate the technological imagination.  Following this, the research team also investigated a range of tinkering practices, from those that involve the use of physical materials to those that involve digital tools and applications. As part of this literature review, we discuss specific examples of practices within community libraries and museums (specifically science/technology centers) that facilitate tinkering-based learning activities.  The focus on tinkering was to suggest new horizons for practices and activities that might be adopted by libraries and museums in the future. 

In brief, my argument is that the technological imagination needs to be actively cultivated.  Too often, we leave the tending of this imagination to serendipity or superstition.  We believe, erroneously I argue, that simply by providing access to technology (computers, mobile devices, games) young people will develop a robust technological imagination.  And yet, as I elaborate elsewhere (Balsamo, forthcoming), a cultivated technological imagination requires more than just understanding how to use technology.  It requires an appreciation for historical precedents and an ethical investment in the creation of our futures.  The exercise of the technological imagination is always a work of time-travel: between the many pasts that create the conditions of the (technocultural) present, and between the present and the many (technocultural) futures we are in the process of enacting. This connects the work of the literature review with the broader aims of my ongoing project to consider how museums and libraries as important cultural institutions contribute to the cultivation of the technological imagination as the foundation for the creation of humane, responsible, and ethical futures. 

While this project was only one year in duration, it has yielded several outcomes (in addition to this literature review) that will serve the basis for future research, design, and practice:  1) an article on the notion of tinkering as a mode of knowledge production, 2) an interactive map on DIY culture, 3) a prototype of an evocative learning object that melds the physical and the digital to serve as a creative platform for informal learning experiences within museums and libraries.  These efforts will be described more fully in the final grant report that will be disseminated on Anne Balsamo’s website:  www.designingculture.net. The blog posts that will follow will be authored by members of the “Inspiring The Technological Imagination” project research team:  Anne Balsamo, Cara Wallis, Maura Klosterman, and Susana Bautista.  The following is a list of postings and a tentative schedule for publication. 


Posting Topic Outline

Inspiring the Technological Imagination: Museums and Libraries in a Digital Age
Anne Balsamo

“Libraries: Setting the Context.  From National Efforts to Create Digital Archives to Local Efforts at Access Equality.”
Maura Klosterman

Digital Media in Communities Libraries, Part 1:  From Information Access to Creative Participation.
Cara Wallis

Digital Media in Community Libraries, Part 2:  Teen Websites
Susana Bautista

Digital Media in Community Libraries, Part 3: Games and Gaming
Anne Balsamo and Stacy Ingber

Digital Media in Community Libraries, Part 4: The Case for Virtual Libraries
Anne Balsamo

Digital Media in Community of Libraries, Part 5: Media Workshops
Maura Klosterman

Museums: Setting the Context
Anne Balsamo

Mobile Eperiences in Art Museums
Susana Bautista

Museums Collections: Digitization-Dissemination-Dialogue
Susana Bautista

Virtual Museums: Where to Begin?
Anne Balsamo

Online (art) museum Experiences
Susana Bautista

Learning from the Edges, Part 1:  The Importance of Play.
Cara Wallis and Maura Klosterman

Learning from the Edges, Part 2: Tinkering in a Digital Age.
Anne Balsamo

Libraries and Museums in a Digital Age: Resources and Web links.”
Anne Balsamo


References for Blog Post #1:
Literature Review:  “Inspiring the Technological Imagination: Museums and Libraries in a Digital Age”

Anderson, Steve, and Anne Balsamo. (2007).  “A Pedagogy for Original Synners.” Ed. Tara McPherson. Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 241-259.

Balsamo, Anne.  (2005). “Taking Culture Seriously: Educating and Inspiring the Technological Imagination.” Academic Commons.  http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/balsamo-taking-culture-seriously

Balsamo, Anne. (Forthcoming).  Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work. (Duke University Press).

Brown, John Seely. “New Learning Environments for the 21st Century.” http://www.johnseelybrown.com/newlearning.pdf

deCerteau, Michel.  (1984).  The Practice of Everyday Life.  Trans. Steven Randall.  Berkeley, CA: U of California Press.

Dilevko, Juris and Lisa Gottlieb. (2004).  The Evolution of Library and Museum Partnerships: Historical antecedents, Contemporary Manifestations and Future Directions. Westport, CN: Libraries Unlimited.

Jenkins, Henry.  (2006).  Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.  New York: NYU Press.

Palfrey, John and Urs Gasser.  (2008).  Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. New York: Basic Books.

Author Bio:
Anne Balsamo directs the Interactive Media Division’s Co-Design Lab in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.  She teaches courses in design across the curriculum, public interactives, and culture and technology for the Interactive Media Arts and Practice program, the Interactive Media Division, and The Annenberg School of Communication at USC.  She is also a freelance museum exhibit developer and curator who has created interactive exhibits for the International Museum of Women, the San Jose Tech Museum, the Papalote Children’s Museum in Mexico City, Liberty Science Center, and the Singapore Science Center.  Her new research effort called “The Tangible Culture Research Project” investigates the design of evocative (mixed reality) knowledge objects and the role of tinkering in a digital age.  For more information about her current work and new transmedia book project, Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work visit http://www.designingculture.net (to be launched July, 2009).

     

Libraries: Setting the Context

From National Efforts to Create Digital Archives to Local Efforts at Access Equality

Libraries and museums have a common core characteristic as stewards of collections that can be made available to others. There is a drive toward preservation informing the mission of both kinds of institutions, what Derrida (1995) has called “the archontic principle.” As digital technology made impacts on the modes of preservation available to libraries, several efforts were made at the national level to bring together research and practices for digital preservation, along with the means for institutions to share access to their collections. As digital technologies and personal computing grew more ubiquitous among the general public, community libraries were recognized for their potential to serve as an internet resource for people who did not otherwise have access to the web. These two strands within the literature on digital media and libraries inform this post. The focus here is on the United States, in part due to the US based nodes the MacArthur Foundation plans to support in its efforts at establishing distributed learning networks mentioned in the previous post.

Digital Archives and Distributed Networks of Preservation

Efforts to digitize library holdings go back to the 1970s, with Project Gutenberg as an early example (Maidenberg, 2008). In 1995, a group of organizations working to digitize their holdings formed the Digital Library Federation as a way to pool resources for infrastructure research and best practices based in collective experience (Kresh, 2007). Funding and institutional support from the US government came around the same time as millennial panics about the loss of digital data and increased circulation of the terms information society and knowledge economy (Ross & Hedstrom, 2005). Smith (2006) writes “in December 2000, recognizing that born-digital content of value to the nation is at risk of being lost to current and future generations, Congress created the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program - NDIIPP." The Library of Congress was charged with oversight of the program, which funded research for digital infrastructures that would support a distributed network of multiple kinds of digital objects (LeFurgy, 2005). Over time, Congress has approved the extension of this network to include state, regional, and international organizations and an increasing number of private sector partners with stakes in preservation technology (Smith, 2006). Funding for the technical architecture was meant to address four critical areas of investment:

1. building a distributed storage platform to help preserving institutions attain redundant and geographically disbursed storage of digital materials at low cost;
2. establishing protocols for preservation-quality data transfer;
3. developing and testing tools and services for ingest, storage, metadata, and formats and
4. developing practices and standards for assessing the quality of preservation systems (Smith, 2006).

The National Science Foundation also sought to support a distributed network of specialized digital holdings in the form of the National Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Educational Digital Library (NSDL). The NSDL “comprises a set of projects engaged in a collective effort to build a national digital library of high quality science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educational materials for students and teachers at all levels, in both formal and informal settings” (Zia, 2001). As a repository for learning environments and educational materials, the NSDL faced distinct challenges from the NDIIPP or other projects that have focused on knowledge stored in print form.

References to the library at Alexandra come up repeatedly in reflections upon the possibility of interconnected digital libraries that would together serve as a repository for all the knowledge produced by humankind (Kresh, 2007).  Since its announcement in 2004, Google’s Google Books project has received the most attention for its attempt to digitize every book that has been published and create such a repository (Coyle, 2006; Jeanneney, 2005; Maidenberg, 2008; Toobin, 2007). The company began working towards this goal through partnerships with university-based libraries and publishing companies and are currently working with US courts to create a settlement agreement from (Pickler, 2009) a class-action suit by the US Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers. The embedded nature of Google’s profit structures and the search tools that serve as access points for users has caused concern among many in the publishing, preservation, and copyright trades since 2004. Responses include the creation of the Open Content Alliance (OCA), which is simultaneously undertaking the mass digitization of books with the goal of creating a digital repository for shared digital media, including its metadata (Maidenberg, 2005) and international outcry against Google’s cultural politics and economic structure ("German Authors,” 2009; Jeanneney, 2005; Picker, 2009)

On one of Google’s self-published blogs, the company emphasizes the ways their project will create access for larger populations to works that can be difficult to find (Smith, 2009). Leetaru (2008) describes Google’s project and those of its competitors as one of access digitization rather than preservation digitization. The difference mostly comes down to the digital formats used to create a digitized version of an analog form. Coyle (2006) creates a similar distinction between “mass digitization” and “non-mass digitization.” The expense and technical support required for digital preservation contributes to the willingness of preservation institutions to collaborate with other institutions or digitization projects as part of their mission to sustain the relevance of their collections for digital publics.

Access and Digital Inequality

The emphasis on access in the mission statements of both Google Books and the OCA fits with discourses surrounding the term the digital divide, which emerged in the mid 1990s as more households and business connected individuals with the web (Estabrook et al., 2007; Gates Foundation, 2004; Hargittai, 2003; Jenkins et al., 2006; Kafai et al., 2007; Warschauer, 2003). Beginning in 1995, the US Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) produced a series of reports titled Falling Through the Net that provided empirical grounds for recognizing stratification “in the use of information technology, attributable largely to socioeconomic factors of race, income, education, and geography” (Gates Foundation, 2004, p. 6). Over time, the term itself has been criticized for oversimplifying how inclusion and participation in digital economies and publics works in relation to the socioeconomic factors mentioned above (Hargittai, 2003; Jenkins et al., 2006; Kafai et al., 2007; Warschauer, 2003). The NTIA has changed the title of its reports to A Nation Online. Hargittai (2003) proposed the term digital inequality: “a refined understanding of the ‘digital divide’ that emphasizes a spectrum of inequality across segments of the population depending on differences along several dimensions of technology access and use.”

The MacArthur Foundation’s DML Initiative is part of the shift away from what Warschauer (2003) and others have characterized as a device based model for understanding the benefits of access to ICT. Research reports from Jenkins (2006) and Ito (2008) are rooted in a literacy based model of ICT access (Warschauer, p.46). This shift came about in part from the disappointing results of early efforts to put computers in the hands of people who were considered to be on the wrong side of the gap (Kafai et al., 2007; Warschauer, 2003). Hargittai (2003) and others have advocated for public policy that supports “affordable access to the telecommunications network” in the form of universal service and promotes autonomy of use or “the freedom to use technologies when, where and how one wishes.” The series of posts on this blog that provide information on new media practices in globalized regional contexts point to specific manifestations of digital inequality as well as ingenuity in efforts at autonomy of use.

Two key reports (Estabrook, 2007; Gates Foundation, 2004) that address US public libraries as sites where people make use of the Internet’s resources mirror an increasing emphasis among library professionals to serve their communities in ways that incorporate digital technologies (Kresh, 2007). University libraries are focusing on comprehensive digital resources for their students through subscriptions to digital archives of scholarly publications like JSTOR, while public libraries are developing strategies for utilizing their physical spaces to connect patrons to digital resources and learning opportunities (Kresh, 2007).

In the 2004 Gates Foundation report Toward Equality of Access: The Role of Public Libraries in Addressing the Digital Divide provided statistical data supporting libraries as a site of Internet use for groups that categorically lacked other means of access. The report also acknowledged libraries as a site that facilitated the learning of computer-related skills through its staff and computer training classes. The 2007 report Information Searches that Solve Problems sponsored by the Pew Internet & American Life project and the University of Illinois School of Library and Information Science presents results from a national survey of how Americans across socioeconomic factors utilized various resources to deal with specific types of problems. The study found that the Internet was the top source of information for problem-solving and that

65% of adults who went to a library for problem-solving help said that access to computers, particularly the internet, was key reason they go to the library for help. And 62% of adults who went to the library for help actually used the computers at the library (Estabrook, 2007).

Conclusion

Although the Library of Congress initiated its NDIIPP program with the aim of creating a shared infrastructure and policies for the preservation of national heritage, it is also currently focused upon access and participation, with the launch of a collaboration with Flickr.com as a key example (Springer et al., 2008). This collaboration leverages existing commercial social media networks to facilitate forms of user contributions such as comments and tags. A report on the success of the pilot program mentions that the collaboration between the Library and Flickr led the website to establish The Commons and serve as a link between digital image archives and various publics. On its website, Flickr claims its twin goals with the project are

1. To increase access to publicly-held photography collections, and
2. To provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge.

While the Library of Congress seeks to make its collections available to more visitors than could reach its physical location, as will be discussed in our next posting, local libraries are working to create physical settings that promote learning in the digital age.

References

Coyle, K. (2006). Mass digitization of books. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 32(6), 641-645.

Derrida, J. (1996). Archive Fever. (E. Prenowitz, Trans). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (original work published 1995)

Estabrook, L., Witt, E., Rainie, L. (2007, December 30). Information searches that solve problems: How people use the internet, libraries, and government agencies when they need help. Pew Internet & American Life Project: Washington, DC. Retrieved from: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/Pew_UI_LibrariesReport.pdf

Gates Foundation. (2004). Toward equality of access: The role of public libraries in addressing the digital divide. Retrieved June 1, 2007, from http://www.gatesfoundation.org.

German authors outraged at Google Book Search. (2009, April 27). Der Spiegel. Retrieved from: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,621385,00.html

Hargittai, E. (2003) The digital divide and what to do about it. In D. C. Jones (Ed), New economy handbook. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Ito, M., Horst, H., Bittanti, M., boyd, d., Herr-Stephenson, B. Lange, P.B. et al. (2008, November). Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning. Retrieved from: http://digitallearning.macfound.org

Jeanneney, J.-N. (2007). Google and the myth of universal knowledge: A view from Europe (T.L. Fagan, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (original work published 2005)

Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A.J., & Weigel, M. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st
century. The MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved from: http://www.digitallearning.macfound.org.

Kafai, Y. B., Peppler, K. A., & Chiu, G. M. (2007) High tech programmers in low-income communities: Creating a computer culture in a community technology center. In Steinfield, Pentland, Ackerman, and Contractor (eds.), Communities and technologies: Proceedings of the Third Communities and Technologies Conference, Michigan State University, 2007, London: Springer, 544-563.

Kresh, D. (Ed.). (2007). The whole digital library handbook. Chicago: American Library Association.

Lagoze, C., Arms, W., Gan, S. Hiiman, D., Hoehn, W., Millman, D. et al. Core services in the architecture of the national science digital library (NSDL). Proceedings of the 2nd ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries, July 14-18, 2002, Portland, OR, USA.  doi: 10.1145/544220.544264

Leetaru, K. (2008, October 6). Mass book digitization: The deeper story of Google Books and the Open Content Alliance. First Monday 13(10). Retrieved from: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2101/2037.

LeFurgy. W. (2005). Building preservation partnerships: The Library of Congress National Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). Library Trends, 54(1), 163-172.

Maidenberg, K. (2008). The race to create a digital library: Google Books vs. the Open Content Alliance. Scroll, 1(1). Retrieved from http://jps.library.utoronto.ca.

Picker, R. (2009, April 29). Antitrust updates: Google Book Search; Section 2 Ssymposium; The mediated book. The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog. Retrieved from: http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2009/04/antitrust-updates-google-book-search-section-2-symposium-the-mediated-book.html

Ross, S. & Hedstrom, M. (2005). Preservation research and sustainable digital libraries. International Journal on Digital Libraries, 5(4), 317-324. doi: 10.1007/s00799-004-0099-3

Smith, A. (2006, June). Distributed preservation in a national context: NDIIPP at mid-point. D-Lib Magazine, 12(6). Retrieved from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june06/smith/06smith.html.

Smith, Adam (2009, April 29). Google Book Search settlement will expand access. Google Public Policy Blog. Retrieved from: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/04/google-book-search-settlement-will.html

Springer, M., Dulabahn, B., Michel, P., Natanson, B., Reser, D., Woodward, D. et al. (2008, October 30). For the common good: The Library of Congress Flickr pilot project. Retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_pilot.html.

Toobin, J. (2007, February 5). Google’s moon shot. The New Yorker, 82(48), 30‐35.

Warschauer, M. (2003). Technology and social inclusion: Rethinking the digital divide. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Digital Media in Community Libraries, Part 5: Media Workshops

In their research on digital media and learning, Jenkins, et al. (2006) and Ito, et al. (2008) highlight the importance of informal learning environments in the acquisition of new media skills for young people. Libraries, like schools and after-school programs (Peppler & Kafai, 2007) can provide access to media production tools and become sites where young people ”hang out, mess around, and geek out” with these tools together. Along with the game based activities mentioned in a previous post, community libraries have recognized their potential to be sites that foster multiple modes of learning. Libraries have long hosted traditional literacy programs and within the ALA and its Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), game programs and other media workshops are seen as a continuation of those efforts. Skills training with digital tools can also be understood as a continuation of libraries’ role in teaching patrons information seeking skills (Tuominen, Savolainen & Talja, 2005). Media workshops in music, video, blog, podcasts and game production are also considered outreach efforts that can bring young people into the library space and introduce them to other library services like loaning books. The ALA and YALSA provide guidelines for ways librarians can utilize free software programs and platforms to create workshops and resources for young people to produce media content from blogs to short films. Many successful media programs in public libraries result from partnerships with media professionals within the local community as well as funding through local arts councils and other grant-making bodies.

Teen Tech Week

Beginning in 2005, The YALSA has sponsored annual Teen Tech Weeks and provides resources for libraries to create technology themed activities. One resource is a wiki site where librarians can share best practices and their plans for Tech Week. For 2008’s “Tune In @ Your Library” theme, Joseph Wilk created a “Getting Started Guide” for ”Making Music with Teens.” The guide lists specific web-based software and freeware programs teens can use to mix audio selections found through the Freesound Project database. The YALSA also sponsored a song contest for teens to create and record their own songs. The winner was Michelle Visent, a student at Felix Varela Senior High School in Miami, FL, with her song “Library.”

“The Library: teen tech week song” on http://www.archive.org

On the wiki for the 2008 Teen Tech Week, Stephanie Iser of the Kansas City Public Library system shared her experience partnering with a local arts organization, Hip Hop Academy KC, which held showcases and workshops on hip hop elements, such as break dancing, turntablism, and rhyming.

While many Teen Tech Week activities are based around video games and consoles, library programs included digital photography workshops and video creation activities. The YALSA has run mini grant competitions in which libraries submit plans for Teen Tech Week that yield $400-$500 to support the library’s creative use of technology programs for the week. Libraries have used the funds to purchase Flip video cameras and audio editing software. The 2008 Teen Tech Week Mini Grants were made possible by Teen Tech Week 2008 Corporate Sponsor Dungeons & Dragons, a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Other sponsors supported the 2009 Teen Tech Week grants.

A 2009 mini grant winner was the Hennepin County Library in Minnesota. According to the wiki, the library planned to use the

“Teen Tech Week Grant a “Party Like It’s Teen Tech Week” event to celebrate creative uses of technology by and for teens. The party will be hosted by our Teen Advisory Group from whom the idea for the grant originated. The main event will be a workshop on Circuit-Bending led by Librarian Camden Tadhg, who will be trained by the Science Museum of Minnesota. In having a staff member train for this event, rather than bringing in an outside presenter, we hope to spread this knowledge throughout the Hennepin County Library system with a “train the trainer” model. Additionally, our Teen Tech Squad will work one-on-one with teens in using rich media creation software such as Scratch, GIMP, Audacity, and ArtRage. The highlight of the day will hopefully be a Circuit Bending Jam Session where we will record the teen participants making music with the instruments they create during the Circuit Bending workshop.”

Ongoing Workshops

Many libraries host workshops that do not involve digital media, with poetry and comic workshops especially prominent. Crafts such as knitting and bead work are also taught in library classes and workshops. The following are a few examples of libraries and their media workshops:

The Carvers Bay Digital Arts Experience (DAE) is a collective effort of the Georgetown County Library System and the Cultural Council of Georgetown County, with funding from the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation and the Francis P. Bunnelle Foundation. The 12-week course was designed to expose middle school students to the basic concepts and skills required to complete digitally oriented audiovisual projects. The ALA Gaming Toolkit site lists the workshops as exemplary of digital arts workshops.

-webjunction.org

As part of ALA’s Libraries, Gaming and Literacy Initiative funded by the Verizon Foundation, 10 libraries nationwide received grants to implement creative game design and gaming programs. The San Pablo Library of California’s Contra Costa County Library System received a grant to implement a music literacy program called Make Music at the San Pablo Library. According to the Library Journal blog,

“activities include: music enrichment assemblies, creative writing workshop featuring a song writing contest, musical Jeopardy, performances by local teen musicians, music composition workshop featuring hands on experimentation with music composition software, music video games like Wii Music and Rock Band, an “Iron Musician” competition, a build your own musical instrument contest, and more.”

The South Orange Public Library in South Orange, NJ hosted a 3 part poetry video workshop run by a local poet and video teacher. Funded by the Edison Media Arts Consortium, the workshops led participants through creative writing, filming and editing processes. The library also hosted a night that featured a screening of all the videos.

The Metropolitan Library Service Agency of the Twin Cities region in Minnesota will be sponsoring video workshops as part of its ”Quiet on the Set” competition this summer, in which people are invited to create short videos about local libraries.

The Pioneer Library System in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma is partnering with a local video teacher to hold videography workshops in several branches this June. The two hour workshops are meant to take small groups through pre-production, filming and editing steps. The events are part of the library system’s “Express Yourself” Summer Reading Program and are sponsored by the Oklahoma Arts Council.

Additional Resource:

The book Get Connected: Tech Programs for Teens is a compilation of tech programs from YALSA and compiled by Rosemary Honnold.

References

Ito, Mizuko, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Rachel Cody, Becky Herr, Heather A. Horst, Patricia G. Lange, Dilan Mahendran, Katynka Martinez, C.J. Pascoe, Dan Perkel, Laura Robinson, Christo Sims, and Lisa Tripp. (with Judd Antin, Megan Finn, Arthur Law, Annie Manion, Sarai Mitnick and Dan Schlossberg and Sarita Yardi) Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media.  Cambridge: MIT Press, Forthcoming.

Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robinson, A. J., & Weigel, M. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Building the field of digital media and learning, 1-68.

Peppler, K. A., & Kafai, Y. B. (2007). From SuperGoo to Scratch: Exploring Creative Digital Media Production in Informal Learning. Learning, Media and Technology, 32(2), 149-166.

Tuominen, K., Savolainen, R., & Talja, S. (2005). Information Literacy as a Sociotechnical Practice. The Library Quarterly, 75(3), 329-345. doi: 10.1086/497311.

“A Closer Look at the Winning Libraries” http://www.libraryjournal.com/blog/1130000713/post/1940043994.html

“Videography workshops coming to area libraries” http://www.news-star.com/arts/x1083525314/Videograhphy-workshop-coming-to-area-libraries

“Teen Poetry Video Workshop” http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/newsandeventsb/teenpoetryvideo.cfm

“Video Production Workshop” http://dentonlibrary.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/video-production-workshop-the-north-branch/

Teen Tech Week Wiki http://wikis.ala.org/yalsa/index.php/Teen_Tech_Week

“Summary of Effort and Result for the Carvers Bay Digital Arts Experience” http://www.webjunction.org/programming-and-outreach-for-young-adults/articles/content/454476