COLIN RHINESMITH: Hello, everyone. My name is Colin Rhinesmith. I'm an assistant professor
of social and community informatics at the University of Oklahoma. It's a real honor
to be here, a real pleasure to be with you all, and to the later hours of the afternoon
before the coffee break. What we're going to do today is first we'll define what is
digital inclusion. We'll try to think about that within what we've heard already, and
I think, really, a number, what we've been asked along with other panelists is to talk
a little bit about the state of the field in terms of digital literacy and inclusion,
and I would agree with the other moderators that have come before me that I think we've
heard many examples already about the state of the field in digital literacy, among different
populations, but I think what our wonderful speakers today will be able to provide some
additional examples, additional perspectives from their work that will contribute, hopefully,
to more full conversation and understanding of digital literacy and inclusion. So we will
talk a little bit about current state of the field and continue on to talk about the challenges
and gaps that will hopefully lead us to an exciting conversation about recommendations.
We will, unfortunately, we are missing one speaker, who I will address in a minute. I
will introduce in a minute, but we have some other people in the audience who could also
speak to Susan Feller's work in tribal libraries, so that will be a good addition.
So let me begin by introducing our speakers who are here. To my second to my left is Ruth
Small, who is Laura J. And L. Douglas Meredith professor of information studies, the I school
at Syracuse. She's founding director of Syracuse University Center for Digital Literacy which
is an interdisciplinary collaborative research and development center for which she has earned
more than 6 million in external funding, including being coPI over 26 years on the high school
faculty and these projects include SOS for information literacy, which was named to the
first list of AASL's best Web sites for teaching and learning, and Project Enable, which we'll
hear more about today, which enable stands for expanding nondiscriminatory access by
librarians everywhere. A project to train librarians nationwide in
ways to provide accessible and inclusive libraries and library information services, programs
and resources, and next to my more immediate left is Dwight McInvaill, who has served as
director of the Georgetown county library of South Carolina since 1996. He was educated
at Presbyterian College, where he received his bachelor's and at the University of North
Carolina at chapel hill, where he received his MLS and at the University of BORDEAUX
in France on a rotary foundation scholarship so his focus on a public librarian is on providing
innovative services for the benefit of his community, which he will be talking more about
today and to achieve that aim, he likes trying, in addition to traditional methods, a mix
of other approaches, which are very exciting and we'll hear more about today, including
interactive gaming to encourage teen literacy, oral history videos to strengthen community
spirit, digital arts instructions to stimulate creativity, digital dissemination of historic
images and documents to preserve and share stories, cooperation with other agencies to
prepare our citizens for natural disasters, and the list goes on, let me tell you. Very
exciting. So we're looking forward to hearing more about Dwight's work.
So unfortunately, our third panelist who couldn't make it, Susan Feller, is president and CEO
of the sorry, the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museum, ATOM. We do have in
the back of the room, we have very exciting report that came out in 2014 that's in the
back of the room that Mary Alice Ball is oh, holding up back there. It's entitled "Digital
Inclusion In Native Communities, " the Role Of Tribal Libraries. And there's some pretty
incredible findings from this report. It's unfortunate she couldn't be here. The reason
why is unfortunately with all the terrible storms in Oklahoma, that a tree fell through
her roof, so it's really awful, and she had to turn around, after driving up yesterday,
as I did from Oklahoma, she had to turn around today and address that problem. So we're really
sorry she couldn't be here, but we do want to include some of the remarks that she did
prepare today. So I'll include some of those in the time that we have.
So this is who we are. This is what we're doing. But let's talk a little bit about digital
inclusion, and what's the difference between digital literacy, digital inclusion. There's
also this thing called the digital divide and all of them are important, and so what
I'd like to do is just to read one bit of a page from the building digital communities
report from the IMLS that came out a few years ago. I had the honor of being involved in
the working group to put together that report, and so here are the IMLS states or asks the
question, what is digital inclusion and why does it matter? The report begins by saying
that digital inclusion is the ability of individuals and groups to access and use information and
communication technologies. Digital inclusion encompasses not only access to the internet,
but also the availability of hardware and software, relevant content and services, and
training for the digital literacy skills required for effective use of information and communication
technologies. The cost of digital exclusion is great. Without access, full participation
and nearly every aspect of American society from economic success and educational achievement
to positive health outcomes and civic engagement is compromised. Now, lastly, what does digital
inclusion mean for people in a community? So specifically, digital inclusion means that
all members understand the benefits of advanced information communication technologies. All
members have equitable and affordable access to highspeed internet connected devices and
online content, and all members can take advantage of the educational, economic and social opportunities
available through these technologies. So what we want to do today to begin, as I
said before, is we'll turn it over to the speakers here to include some comments on
what they're seeing within their own work, and also other examples that they find to
be exemplars for models that we should discuss that haven't been announced already today
and begin a conversation from there, so I'll start with Ruth, please.
>> RUTH SMALL: Okay. Thank you. Back in 2006 this is a little history leading to the answer
to this question, my answer to this question, I received an IMLS NLG, National Leadership
Grant, to study to do one of the school library impact studies, specifically in New York State.
And it was a multiresearch method study using in depth surveys, general surveys, focus groups
and case studies in 1600 school libraries in New York State.
And one of the questions that we asked in that study of those 1600plus librarians was
of all of these different tasks that are normal tasks for a school librarian, how do you rate
yourself in terms of your ability to perform them? We had things like collection development
and providing information literacy instruction. We had several probably I think 15 or 16 different
tasks. And by far, we were actually startled by this result, 84% had statistically significant
difference from all of the other tasks, 84% of the librarians that responded said they
felt not adequately prepared to serve students with disabilities.
So we explored that in a little more depth, and that was in the first general survey.
So in the in depth survey, and then the focus groups and case studies, we explore that in
a little more depth and found that not only did these librarians not receive this training
in their preservice programs, but when it came time for programs, professional development
programs in their schools, they were left out of the loop. Those programs were for teachers,
and not for librarians. Another case of librarians being left out.
So we saw this immediately as a high need, and we were very lucky to receive, in 2010,
a grant, a Laura Bush 21st Century Grant, to do something about that. And Project Enable
was born. And we've had three successive grants to support Project Enable. So what is Project
Enable? Well, it's a program to train school to train
librarians. We started with school librarians, to provide accessible libraries and inclusive
library programs and services. So we originally started with focused on New
York State school libraries and school librarians using facetoface training. We quickly saw
that this was not going to be fast enough, nor give us enough coverage to cover the need
so we asked for another grant from IMLS and got it to expand Project Enable to school
librarians nationwide. At that point, we quickly found out from other surveys that we conducted
that academic and public librarians felt exactly the same way. They were not prepared in their
preservice program, and they do not have adequate professional development to feel that they
are capable of doing what we've asked. So we expanded again and got another grant from
IMLS to expand to public and academic librarians basically all librarians, and nationwide.
So Project Enable, in its third iteration, became an online program so that we could
reach more people faster. It provides foundational, customized, free training to librarians. We
only ask that they register, and we ask that so that we can customize it. It contains five
selfbased learning modules on disability awareness, laws and policies, accessible libraries, inclusive
programs and services and assistive technology, and the URL, in case you're wondering, is
projectenable.syr.edu. Project Enable is multimedia. It includes interactive exercises, quizzes
and tests, games, webinars, and all kinds of other information. It's actually kind of
fun to go through these modules, and they're quite comprehensive. You can pick and choose
what you want to do. It's selfbased. But one of the other things that we have customized
is that you can go through Project Enable as an individual at your own pace, and looking
at what you want, or you can go through it as a group. And what I mean by that is if
a faculty at a university wants to have their students go through Project Enable or part
of Project Enable, they can register that group, and monitor their progress. If a library
director or a professional developer or trainer in a library system wants to have their staff
or part of their staff go through project enable, they can do that as well. So there's
a lot of flexibility in how you participate. Today, since we launched the Project ENABLE
online training, we've had 1.4 million visitors and over a thousand participate in our training.
We're currently doing some pilot research, and actually, this fits in well with the last
presentation, because we started with research, and Project ENABLE grew out of the research
that we had done, and now we're conducting research on Project ENABLE and its impact
by collecting personal stories as evidence of impact on not only on librarians and libraries
and library practice, but also on the people they serve, the people with disabilities.
We're actively involved also in two other related IMLSfunded projects. One in Illinois,
at the Illinois State library called Targeting Autism, and another in Florida through Florida
State University, Project Pals, which is a project to train librarians to provide services
and resources to children with autism. So that's Project ENABLE, and we feel that
that is what is called inclusive digital literacy, where we are training librarians to be able
to provide all of their services, all of their programs to all of their patrons.
>> COLIN RHINESMITH: Great. Thank you, Ruth. So actually I forgot to say that we're going
to try to make this more of a conversation, interactive among the three of us so that
hopefully by the time we're saying what we have prepared that we can open it all to you
and have that be a continuation of the discussion. So now we will turn to Dwight. And Dwight,
please. >> DWIGHT McINVAILL: Colin, thank you. Thank
you so very much. I also wanted to thank the IMLS for this opportunity, and a place where
you don't have a large budget, you don't get out very much, and so it's very good to be
with you. I feel a bit like Alison as well. You recall
that she talked about how so many ideas are abuzz in the room, well I'm just seeing neurons
shimmering everywhere, and so it's a bit distracting. And also, you'll have to forgive me. As a
southerner, we never talk in a direct line. And it's a problem. And I do know the time
keeper. He's not going to cut me any slack. [Laughter]
So let me proceed and try to do so in a direct way.
We've been asked to talk about successful models, and then challenges and gaps. And
I've been dazzled, listening to Ruth talk. She is so very, very passionate about working
with people with disabilities. And Colin as well, is a wise man. He's wise beyond his
years. And I'm between them. The model that I'd like to talk about, I'd
like first to talk about two academic models, one of which influenced me a good number of
years ago, perhaps a decade ago, and it was a DaVinci Institute Study on the future of
libraries and it talked about what is a library going to be like once books are gone. And
it said, you know, you need to concentrate on the latest technologies. You need to concentrate
on good space for people to do things, and you need to find out what's at the heart of
your community, and so that's what I've used. And in addition to that, of course, another
very good grant, and I want to talk about it and then later, when we do the challenges
and gaps, going in to it in more detail, but it's by Sin and Kim, in 2008, and I wish that
it could be replicated, and maybe it can be with your data, but the title is get this
"Use and Nonuse of Public Libraries in the Information Age, a Logistic Regression Analysis
of Household Characteristics and Library Service Variables." But it's a terrific, terrific
report, and it does identify those groups that are disadvantaged, and then it also talks
about specific obstacles so when we get to that portion, I'll go into that in more detail.
The model that I'm going to use is my own library. I actually had a list of others,
and pretty much they were covered during the previous presentations. I'm looking at the
gentleman with a wonderful white mustache on the third table, wonderful program, wonderful
program. And others, of course, as well. We have, in my library, which serves 60,000 people,
and has about 30 fulltime equivalent employees, we have a digital archives librarian, we have
a digital arts librarian, we have a team tech librarian, we have a Hispanic librarian, we
have a cultural programming librarian. None of them well, one of them is an MLS, so we'll
talk in a little bit about gaps. We have achieved a lot. We have a digital library with 42,000
items. We were the first digital library in South Carolina. We helped to found the state
digital library, and other digital libraries. Our digital arts librarian has interviewed
many, many people. She's created 800 oral history videos, and 200 of those are online.
And those 200 are accessible through our digital library. The teen tech librarian has created
a program that involves an interactive gaming and coding, and app production with teams
across the county. Our Hispanic librarian, we've just started with that. We had a terrific
Hispanic fair, our first fair. We have instituted a collection of Hispanic materials. We've
created a community team to deal with Hispanic issues because South Carolina, 5% of our population
already is Hispanic. And then I just had a cultural programming
librarian, I established that, just after John Palfrey, who I love, said something to
the effect that, you know, viewing a library as a community center isn't a very good idea.
But then I was able to read that last night and understand more about what he was saying,
that we have a certain brand and we have very good strengths that go beyond that. How am
I? Okay. Good. Okay. Very good.
I did want to talk about one project that was recently done that's grown out of all
of this, and it's our out of The Rice Fields Project and Georgetown County, for about 200
years, 90% of the population was enslaved. And it was a major riceproducing area of the
South. And the problems echoed to the state, along with the opportunities, because a very
beautiful culture was formed called Goa Culture, but the problem is, of course, it's been impacted
over time by a variety of stresses, and so we decided in "Out of the Rice Fields, we
got three grants, or really three funding sources, to do the following. We met with
artists and we found out would this be a value for them to be highlighted as artists and
cultural leaders. We did that with the South Carolina Arts Commission and then we applied
to the National Endowment For the Humanities and we got a grant to actually interview them
and to have a series of lectures on GULA topics from music to art to all kinds of wonderful
things. And then we worked with a cultural agencies up and down the coast of South Carolina
to form a team to create the Rice Forum 2015, which will be a threeday event, which will
occur in September, and we're going to have the premier of our GULA arts and cultural
leader film on the Thursday. On the Friday, we'll have nine scholarly speakers talk about
the impact of the rice industry of South Carolina, both before and after the civil war in the
area of arts and culture, before the civil war, right after the civil war, and from World
War II to the present. And then that night, we're going to have a ballet, a big ballet
troupe is going to come in and feature the works of Jonathan Green, and I'm waiting for
Tim to say one minute left. And then the next day,k, we're going to collaborate with the
museum and we're going to have a wonderful event where we have a breakfast and have a
talk, and then that afternoon, we're going to have children singing on the lawn of the
Kaminski House with some lectures by some people who know about GULA music and then
that evening we're going to have a wonderful event with stories and GULA folklore and more
dance and song, and so it's just going to be a great time. But that's the kind of thing
that we like to do, and we like to involve young people throughout that process in interviewing,
in creating the and editing the material, and then being there to research the material,
and we go out to sites, we meet with people in their homes. We met with a man who carves
canes on the side of the road. It's just a lot of fun, that's how we do it.
[Applause] >> COLIN RHINESMITH: So I have the uncomfortable
task of speaking for Susan, which I really don't want to do because she should be here,
but she did she prepared so much really important information that should be shared, and so
if you'll bear with me, I will share some of Susan's remarks.
So but also, a little more just very quickly about Susan, and I'll sort of forfeit my turn,
if need so we can keep going to some other to the next round.
But it is important to note also that so Susan Feller, who was supposed to be here, is recently
retired from the Oklahoma Department of Libraries where she served as development officer. In
addition to raising major funding for special initiatives, Susan also directed statewide
projects relating to preserving and advancing cultural heritage of all types, including
serving as the state coordinator for Oklahoma's IMLS funded as an advocate, Susan has worked
with IMLS funded tribal initiatives since 2006. National programs under her direction
include annual continuing education initiatives, tailored to the specific needs of tribal cultures,
as well as studies relating to the structure, activities and needs of the nation's 519 tribal
archives libraries and museums, and most recently, Susan directed and coauthored the digital
inclusion in native nations report, which is, again, in the back of the room.
So Susan had some comments on some of the good things that are happening. Of course,
they're incredible challenges on tribal lands and native country. But let me just share
some of the bright spots that she wanted us to touch on today. So first, the FCC and other
federal agencies recognize that the lack of Broadband capacity in Indian country must
be addressed. Progress is slow, but many advances have been made in the past five years. These
same agencies also realize that once Broadband capacity improves, the need for digital literacy
programs increases significantly, and tribal libraries must be prepared to fulfill this
growing demand. Second with support from IMLS, the firstever study of digital inclusion needs
of native communities was conducted in 2014 and the resulting report is providing an action
plan to help us systematically address issues, identify resources and actively seek solutions.
She's happy to report that one of the key action items will be realized this September
when the first ever digital inclusion summit will take place in Washington, D.C.. the summit
will bring together a tribal librarians, funders, federal agencies, tribal leaders and other
stakeholders to begin the process of working together to ensure the best possible digital
inclusion programs for native communities. And then third, there is progress towards
state library agencies becoming more engaged with tribal libraries. While Arizona, New
Mexico, California, Oklahoma and few other a few other state library agencies have long
provided support for travel libraries, others have not been as engaged. By providing access
to training, helping with Erate applications, providing access to library loans, sharing
summer reading resources and allowing travel library patrons to access subscription databases,
state libraries have the potential to significantly assist tribal libraries. And I will talk in
a little bit about why these advances are so important given the tremendous need from
the work that she's seen and done. So briefly in whatever amount of time we have
left, maybe three minutes, I want to share a little bit about what I I want to throw
out some provocative sort of comments here with the little time that I have as an unfunded
IMLS grantee. So maybe I could do that. Maybe that's going to hurt my chances in the future,
but that's okay. That's okay. It's mid afternoon. What I want to do is I want to propose sort
of two ideas today that are not mine but I want to amplify comments that I think are
extremely important and help us to really think differently about digital literacy inclusion.
I want to propose the idea that the target audiences that we often think about when we
are working within libraries, and we're designing digital literacy inclusion programs, they
are already technology experts, okay, particularly in lowincome communities. And I want to throw
that out, building on work from Virginia Eubanks at the University of Albany, who has done
extensive research with lowincome women. She wrote a book called "Digital Dead End, fighting
For Social Justice in the Information Age." She worked in a YWCA in New York, and found
that actually in developing a digital literacy program, and offering a digital literacy program,
you know, and expecting they would come, they didn't come, right? And so she realized that
she was wrong, that all of her assumptions about people who lack skills, who don't have,
you know, the skills that we hold up as these, you know, goals that we really want everyone
to have because they are important, that actually, there are other skills, and really important
skills. And the stories behind the skills, as people survive every day around technology
and ways that we don't often think about and consider, such as dealing with the welfare
system in this country, and how engagement with technology actually makes a lot of the
people that we consider to be people without technology skills actually technology experts,
but that do we spend the time to understand and listen to those stories deeply and carefully
and closely to help us then develop programs based on those needs that we hear is a great
contribution from her work. And I think there's a lot to be learned if we begin our programs
not only by considering our patrons, our constituents, the target, the end users of our digital literacy
programs as technology experts, but then inviting them both into the design, development, implementation
and evaluation of our digital literacy and inclusion programs is a very exciting way
to engage digital literacy and inclusion. And then lastly, in the last minute I have,
I also want to call attention to the free library of Philadelphia. I was really honored
that I had the opportunity to serve as an evaluator on a twoyear Knight foundation grant,
the free library hot spots program, which was incredibly innovative. It allowed essentially
embedded librarians within community organizations to promote digital literacy inclusion and
it was an incredible engagement strategy and one of the things that I found from my study
was that actually what we know from the literature is that obviously comfort with technology
is a really important outcome that we like to see people have at the end of our digital
literacy programs, but what I actually found that comfort before one engages with technology
is extremely important. What does that mean? That libraries then play an incredible role
in helping people to feel comfortable, and invited, particularly when it's in partnership
with a communitybased organization, like the free library hot spots program did, that allowing
people to feel safe, trusted, supported and really connected to their anchor institution
is the gateway towards technology literacy and training, and that was a really interesting
finding that I wanted to share with you today. So I could talk more, but I will turn it over
for a second round. And now we'd really like to talk about some of the challenges. We're
going to combine sort of the challenges and recommendations with the time we have so we
can open it up to a broader conversation. So who would like to start?
>> DWIGHT McINVAILL: Well, I wanted to play off some of the things that you just said
when you mentioned about giving something and will they come, the Sin and Kim study,
one thing I liked about it is they did identify the disadvantaged, which they identified as
ethnic minorities, immigrants and people with disabilities, and the three objects they've
identified, one of which you touched upon, proximity deficiencies. You know, you can't
assume that people will come, particularly in rural areas where transportation is a huge
problem. But you have to go to them. And then the second thing is the poor relevance of
services and collections. If you don't get them get folks to participate from the outset
on planning, they may not come because they don't really consider it to be anything worthwhile.
So it could be the content as well. And then the third thing was the lack of the
continuous efforts because people associate with people who they think are their friends.
And so those are three things that I think the Sin and Kim use and nonuse of public libraries
in the information age, and I'll leave off the rest of it, does a good job of talking
about. We got two smart invest too smart investing
at your library grants, and the second one was a twoyear project, and we worked with
the human services collaborative of Georgetown County, a group that the Francis Bunnelle
Foundation had brought together, agencies that deal with the housing and other needs
of the most disadvantaged to the community, the idea, how do you break the cycle of poverty?
How do you change root behaviors? And we actually had people from each one of the agency's group
of patrons to be on a committee to help us to outline things that would be of interest
to them at the outset. And then we were able to use what they had proposed, and actually
put that in a proposal. Kind of like what Alison had recommended. But again, this was
a group of the very neediest people. And so from that, we had really good response, and
we went, of course, to the centers that they were accustomed to going to. We always try
to provide a lot of food. And that's one thing that I wish that federal programs would permit
us to do. If that could ever be changed to feed people, because they love it. They love
it. And with the GULA program that we did, we paid through the friends of the library
for food to be made available. We had a lot of people come, a lot of even nonGula people,
when they learned about the food, they came and they really enjoyed it. So those were
a couple of the things. So playing off of you, I'm now going to Ruth?
>> RUTH SMALL: I'm just smiling because when you said food, I always teach my students
that my area of research is motivation, and so I always tell them that if they want to
motivate and this is school library students if they want to motivate the teachers in their
schools to come to their training, or whatever they're going to have in the library, make
sure you have food, because they will come, and they do.
So, you know, well, another area of my research, and it has to do with motivation, is in the
area of innovation, and I started looking at this will relate, promise I started looking
at adult inventors, and what they did, how they did it, and why they did it. And I got
really interested in how they started. And many of them started as children, with ideas.
And pursuing those ideas, even when other kids may not have thought it was very cool
or parents may have not thought it was very a very good idea.
So then I started looking at child innovators, kids who want to do things that are out of
the box, but how do they do that, and who supports them, and what allows them to succeed
or not succeed? And one of the things that I found was that they had a strong mentor
in their life, either a parent, a teacher, someone. And by the way, it was rarely the
librarian, okay, which was a signal going off in my mind immediately.
But anyway, and so but one of the things we also found out was that the kids who usually
participate in those kinds of activities are also rarely from an underrepresented group.
They rarely minorities and they're rarely kids with disabilities. And so this is now
my new passion, to try to find out how, first of all, librarians can serve as mentors to
the kids who don't have mentors in terms of encouraging their creativity and innovation
and their ideas, and to follow their passions. There's so many kids who don't have that person
in their life to help them do that. So one of the things I was going to recommend
to IMLS, if I may be so bold, is to make sure that in your RFP, that those who submit proposals,
think about people with disabilities in particular, and how they can make sure that what they're
doing is going to be accessible and inclusive to all people.
So one of the ways of doing that is to incorporate universal design, universal design for learning
principles into their project deliverables. Universal design are those principles that
guide us in terms of facilities design, how far apart, for example, tables should be in
libraries so that wheelchairs can get through, how high tables should be so people with braces,
or who have other kinds of mobility issues can sit at a table or bring a wheelchair to
a table. And universal design for learning principles have to do with how we design learning
deliverables such as even a Web site. Is the font large enough. Is the background color
and the color of the font, is there enough contrast so the people with visual disabilities
can actually see what's on that site. People with hearing disabilities, is there alternative
to videos, alternative transcript for videos, things like that. We don't normally think
about those things, but they keep other people from participating in what we produce. So
I would suggest that maybe IMLS put in their proposal RFPs, all of them, that those who
submit a proposal do address UD and UDL principles in their project deliverables.
>> COLIN RHINESMITH: Thank you, Ruth, and I'll turn it over to Dwight for his recommendations
and then we'll open it up to the audience. >> DWIGHT McINVAILL: Ruth's ideas are so exciting
and when she mentioned the idea about the right kids are not coming. I mean, that's
so true, you know, the privileged can so easily be there and we're glad to be working with
the privileged as well, but the right kids aren't coming, and I think one thing that
I would agree with you on and disagree with you on at the same time is librarians become
mentors. Yes and no. I think we have the opportunity to not reinvent to avoid reinventing the wheel
by having the IMLS and this is a recommendation really emphasize partnerships. Now, not formal
partnerships that cut potential partners out budgetarily, you know, that's sometimes the
case. I think people need to be paid if they're going to be helping us, but people who already
have connections, people who are already friends of the kids that we really would like to see,
and again, you can think of the whole list of people who already are mentors of poor,
rural, isolated kids. So I won't go into that but I think that's a key thing.
The next thing is I would encourage the IMLS and profession as a whole to try to get the
right kind of people in our field. And what I'd say is get passionate, asymmetrical people.
You know, I don't think we need people who can do everything. And we don't need people
who are selfsatisfied. We need people who are edgy. We need people who are passionate.
We need people who are fiery and we need people who have a real special skill, that that skill
is working with well with people, that's great. If it's doing editing of videos, that's great.
If it's working with technology with teens, that's great. They need to be edgy individuals.
And again, you're going to have to have some administrators that can corral the cats. But
at the same time, that's what I think we need. And so the next committee, I the next group
I hope will talk about that some. And I hope the IMLS will make that happen.
>> COLIN RHINESMITH: Great. So with the time that we have left, we'd like to open this
up to you all, and to respond to any of the points that we've talked about today, but
also additional ideas, recommendations for other approaches to funding digital literacy
and inclusion, particularly those that have communitywide or communitybased approaches.
>> Hi. I'm Mega and I'm from the University of Maryland. So one of the things that I see
as a clear need is training librarians in terms of digital literacy pedagogy. That's
an area that I see is extremely needed. I work with young adults from Title I schools,
and let me tell you, the digital literacy skills is pretty dismal. The way they assess
credibility of information is just I'm just in awe when I see them assessing credible
information. And I think I know what the reason is. It's the way that we teach digital literacy,
in schools, in libraries. We've our most tragic thing in schools, and also in other libraries,
is our databases, right? So we encourage our young people to use this databases but when
they need information, where do they go to? They go to Google and Google information,
and it gives you a lot of information, and they don't know what type of information they
should trust, and how can they aggregate all the information that they are seeing. So I
think that's one of the need that I do see in terms of digital literacy is we need to
reenvision how we teach digital literacy. >> RUTH SMALL: Can I just comment on that?
It isn't just Google. It's also Wikipedia. One of the questions we asked these young
innovators was how do you find the information you need to be successful as an inventor?
And one child wrote that he asked his father. His father was his mentor. And his father
he said, one of the things that we teach young innovators is to use the patent office, the
U.S. Patent Office database to find out whether a particular invention has already been invented.
That's what should be taught. His father, however, had a better idea. He said, we're
going down to the drugstore and we're going to pick up every current magazine on the shelves
and we'll look through it and if we find what you want to invent there, then we know it's
already been invented, and if we don't, then you can go ahead. So it's funny, but it isn't
funny, because we need digital literacy for parents, too, I guess. But I think there's
a definite lack of digital literacy understanding in kids of all levels.
>> Greg Michaels, Madison Public Library. You mentioned earlier about digital divide
but I didn't hear a whole lot of conversation about this. I don't know if this is a question
or more of a rant on my part. But I look at Susan's report, where only 30% of the tribal
have access to the internet. We face a lot of the similar problems in certain sections
of the City of Madison, you would think everybody would have access to internet, but it doesn't
happen. Your program in Philadelphia providing the free hot spots, rural Wisconsin, another
major issue. The companies don't find it profitable to provide internet access. How do we gain
access with those barriers in place? I mean, there's a monopoly on who provides access.
You look at countries around the world. Sweden, you can get a gig access for $25 a month.
You know, why can't we achieve that in the United States?
>> COLIN RHINESMITH: Yes. Well, let me just tell you. Well, I think one of the exciting
initiatives, as many people know, about the Broadband technology opportunities program,
was incredible initiative, unprecedented to increase access to infrastructure across the
United States. That was successful. I don't have the numbers in front of me to tell you
sort of, you know, the impact of that, but one of the things that I want to stress is
that while there has been actually a lot of funding for promoting infrastructure, a lot
less money has been set aside for what you do once you have access. And so digital so
yes, and I think that's a real credit to the IMLS building digital communities report as
they define digital inclusion as they have, that the first part of that is access, and
then the second part is really the adoption, and you can't have adoption without access.
But I think that again libraries and trying to understand the role of libraries, including
the digital inclusion access, I've been arguing that actually we might be able to understand
adoption in different ways but understanding adoption outside of the home. Because if some
communities simply aren't going to get access in the ways that you have outlined here, that
we need to understand other ways that adoption is meaningful for those populations.
>> And Colin, could I chime in here, too? Sorry. IMLS, Greg, in response to your question,
IMLS is part of an interagency. There's 25, 26 agencies that are part of the new White
House Broadband Opportunity Council and so what we're looking at because there's not
this big flood of money out there now, so we are looking at policies that we have within
our agencies that might be utilized to help deploy Broadband around. And I would encourage
you to go back to your communities and talk to your city managers, talk to people, you
know, about do you have a dig once policy so if you're trenching for plumbing, you know,
a new sewer system, can you lay conduit for Broadband. So we're hoping we'll have a report,
I think it's due out August 27th to the president, and so we're hoping that that can push this
forward, too. >> Just wanted to add in Southern Georgetown,
South Carolina, there are about 4,000 people that don't have internet access. The lines
just aren't there. If we put a library in that portion of the county, they have to put
a line in, and so that's what we're aiming to do. It may take us five years, but again,
it's the idea of librarians themselves can create, through attention to proximity, the
same the exactly what you're talking about. We've established two of our libraries right
beside schools as well, and one area that's fairly wealthy, but where kids are going to
come from the poor areas because that's kind of the central place that they all show up,
and then the other in the most poor the poorest area of our county, where the kids can just
flood over every day, and they do, and fill up the library after school. So proximity
is important. >> Hi. This is Jill Castek from Portland State
University. I thank you for having this topic on the agenda, general literacy and inclusion,
and I just want to mention and point out the very obvious connection that we are in Kansas
City and this is one of the most progressive communities in thinking about digital inclusion,
Google fiber, and some of the ways that the digital inclusion networks and opportunities
are starting to pervade these kinds of communities. And so I encourage us very strongly. I know
there's many experts in the room on this topic, but to look at the community around us and
look at the efforts that are putting being put forth towards digital inclusion through
organizations like connect for good and others so that we're having these communitybased
institutions as a part and parcel of examining our own practice and our own impact.
>> So time director of the Kansas City Public Library. We're dealing with Google fiber.
We have Google fiber in this library you'll be happy to know and you're exactly right.
There is a large strategy. My deputy director, wave, is in charge of our digital inclusion
efforts, is on the national Digital Inclusion Task Force have I got that right? I'm involved
we're both involved with Shelby, the schools, hospitals, libraries and Broadband, et cetera,
but you're exactly right. That one of the issues here, you look at this building, which
cost us about $30 million to renovate, or our library, our big branch, which cost about
$15 million, or our regular branches, which cost anywhere from 5 to $10 million, we need
to think about our outreach in different terms, and what they are doing in Philadelphia, and
I believe there's a large citywide venture in Philadelphia, what Chicago's doing, Seattle
is doing, et cetera, is pushing all this technology out in ways with things like mobile hot spots.
And one of our ideas is to do more wired locations, but smaller branch locations that are partnering.
You mentioned connecting for good, which is a great organization starting in Kansas City,
Kansas, a guy named Michael is part of our team. Here we're working with the housing
authority in Kansas City, we're working with the adult literacy organization, Literacy
KC. We could go on down the road. And the city itself. And the city is kind of bumping
along on this and we're pushing this, but it's actually not that expensive. We're really
focused, and I've tried to reorient Shelby on this. We're really focused on the connection
to the individual home. It's one of the reasons I said what I said at the very beginning in
my welcome about the 70% of kids in the Kansas City school district not having a connection
at home, the 40% of the kids in the school district who have at least two addresses during
the school year, and you think about public housing, you think about breakdown of the
family. With we need to think in terms of institution, anchor institutions, the library
being the primary institution seems to me, but lots of others, public housing, our community
centers, which are the parks department in Kansas City, partnering with us to move not
just and the other point that's been made in this discussion, which is exactly right,
not just in getting access, access is a start. You have to one of the things that Michael,
in connecting for good, does so well, better than the library does right now, is training
people how to use the devices, and actually starting out by explaining to them why the
devices are so important, why the connection to the internet is so important, because a
big percentage of the people that 20%, in a city like Kansas City, of people who don't
have a connection, don't have the connection because they don't really understand why it's
important. And we can tell them about job searching. We can tell them about healthcare
information. We can tell them about advancing their educational credentials, et cetera.
But you have to start there, it seems to me. And libraries are the center of this, but
we can't look at it in terms of our connection in a large branch, and we need to look at
what we do for people who are probably never going to be connected at home, at least in
the lifetime of anybody in this room. >> Well, and I also just wanted to just quickly
add also since John Horrigan is in the room, really we have him to thank also. I think
it's a public shoutout to understanding some of the barriers to adoption, and for home
Broadband adoption. And that's incredibly important as we try to tackle issues of access.
And so it's just thank you. >> Hello. My name is Mark, I'm with the Association
of Research Libraries in Washington, D.C., and my question is for Ruth, but really for
anybody else in the room. I'm delighted to hear about the work around accessibility and
ARL has most recently fairly recently really been engaged in this conversation, particularly
with respect to accessibility of digital content and trying to push the marketplace, and force
vendors to be a little bit more nimble and allow their content to be more accessible,
but also in creating collaborations to make analog content more accessible to more people
as well. But my question is, this is all from the user
perspective, and what we're trying to initiate is a conversation about accessibility around
the workforce issue, that is given the there's another explosion of a demographic explosion
is also the number of people that have both physical and cognitive disabilities in the
United States, and so my question is our conversations, I was going to do some research about this,
but since I have a group of experts in the room, why not ask you, are there conversations
happening around recruitment of people with disabilities in to our workforce and accommodating
them, finding appropriate roles for them, and whatever capacity, as advisory capacities,
as professionals in our organizations, what do we need to do, if it's not happening, what
do we need to do to initiate that conversation? >> COLIN RHINESMITH: Ruth, did you want to
respond? >> RUTH SMALL: I don't know if I'm capable
of answering that question. I've seen some evidence of it when I was in at the state
State Library of Illinois, I saw some people I heard some people there talking about that
issue, but I don't know about the research or any of the more of a national level effort.
So maybe someone else in the room does know that. Sorry.
>> Maybe one basic need again is just through the simple collaboration between the local
board of disabilities and special needs and the library, because, for instance, we have
had two longterm disabled individuals as library shelvers, as library pagers. One has is autistic,
but he is super with numbers, you know, he can walk by a display case and he'll look
at it and say that's the same calendar as in 1938, you know, and he just knows.
And so even if it's on that level initially, to try to bring some people in.
>> 30 seconds. So we have been given money by a local foundation to work with an internet
startup that has an online app for folks with disabilities to prequalify them for library
jobs. Be happy to pass that information along to anybody.
>> Colin, would it be okay with you, Sandy had her hand up earlier, to let her say the
final. Sandy from Iowa Tribe. >> COLIN RHINESMITH: Yes, please.
>> Hello. Hi. I'm Sandy Tharp. I'm the librarian for the Iowa Tribe. And I was hoping that
you all listened to what Susan said that Colin shared, and I just wanted to share my story
just a little bit. When I walked in to this beautiful place this morning, I almost cried
because it was so big. My library is very small. In 2009, I found out I had no budget
and no money, and my library's very similar to what most tribal libraries face, and there's
566 federally recognized tribes across the nation, and a lot of them don't have tribal
libraries, and it makes me very sad that so many state agencies don't work with tribes.
Had it not been for the Oklahoma State Library, I would not have even had any new children's
books in my library. I had 150 used books. But IMLS, they were my first real money for
my library, $7,000. But we offer a GED program. We just finished a program where we put laptops
with homebound elders, and teaching them how to use online health resources. It was very
effective. But when I had to pick up the laptops, the elders could not afford internet at their
house. It cost $60 a month. And my children do not have computers at home. They don't
have smartphones. So I just hope, if you're from a state, and that state agency does not
support tribal libraries, I hope you'll call them and I hope IMLS will create some incentives
to have them work with tribal libraries. Thank you.
>> COLIN RHINESMITH: Well, thank you, Sandy. I want to thank the speakers. Thank you to
Susan, who couldn't be here, and thank all of you. Thank you very much.
[Applause]