Your Technology Outreach Adventure

Tools for Human-Centered Problem Solving

Erin Berman, Erin Jones

• Publisher: ALA Editions
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780838917787
• eBook ISBN:
  9780838917862
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

1

BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

For generations, librarians have been the gatekeepers to knowledge. They have preserved history in the tombs of texts, unlocking passages for those who entered through their doors. Information was not always immediately accessible in your pocket like it is today. Instead, if you wanted to tap into the knowledge of the world, you had to venture down to the local library, tiptoe your way through endless stacks of books, and spend hours getting lost in microfiche. The library held all of the information within its materials, and the librarians were there to instruct you on how to access it all. Their combined mission was to serve information needs—to teach literacy.

TRADITION IN LITERACY INSTRUCTION

Although walking into a modern-day library may feel very different from entering the charming rooms locked away in your memory, the library’s mission remains the same: literacy. When we get to the core of what a public library is for, we always return to literacy. One of the library’s roles in our society is to teach people the skills needed to be competent in a certain area, to possess knowledge. The library exists to create informed citizens who can be their best possible selves and also be engaged in the democracy of their communities. In today’s world, libraries are looking at literacy through a new lens.

A librarian’s job used to be primarily about reading literacy. Beginning with young children, a librarian’s work revolved around teaching people how to unlock the information held within the texts that lined the library walls. The librarian taught search strategies, how to evaluate sources, and critical-thinking skills. Without the Internet, there were limited pathways to accessing knowledge. The library was the place you would go to gain the skills and knowledge needed to interact with the world around you. Today’s librarians still do all these things, but they now have additional literacies to teach.

With the advent of the Internet and the explosion of technology, people began finding their information in new ways; they explored and interacted with the world differently from how they had in the past. Large segments of the population are now connected to the Internet in some fashion (e.g., via broadband or mobile phone service). According to the Pew Research Center, “Adoption rates are only one component of the digital divide, however. A person’s comfort level with technology and the rate in which they use the internet at work and in their everyday lives also varies by income group.”1 Even as more people become connected, those at lower socioeconomic levels still struggle with adoption.

Libraries, being the great equalizer, jumped at the opportunity to level the playing field in the quest for knowledge and were some of the first places to offer the public free access to computers and later the Internet. With these new technological tools, librarians found themselves needing to teach people how to unlock the knowledge trapped behind a screen.

ACCESS AND KNOWLEDGE

Libraries may be the only place where some people are able to access technology. However, equality of access cannot happen if people are unfamiliar with how the technology works in the first place. Our responsibility as librarians is to put together programming and resources that assist people in learning these technologies. We have to go beyond just basic computer classes and simply teaching patrons how to use a device. Instead, we are charged with assisting people in becoming critical thinkers so they can adapt quickly when technology changes. Today’s world is complicated, and navigating through it can be frustrating and overwhelming for many. Some will become overwhelmed by their frustration, choosing not to adapt at all and setting themselves up to be left behind.

With an ever-changing technology landscape, what can we do to ensure no one in our society is left behind? How can we ensure that those people in our communities who are afraid of adopting technology, or who don’t have access to it, can gain the skills needed to participate fully as twenty-first-century citizens? Although we may have the latest and greatest technology residing within the walls of our libraries, it can serve only those who walk through our doors.

In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that 29 percent of the lowest adopters of technology, those living in households making $30,000 or less a year, have never visited a library; yet, 80 percent of respondents said they felt the library had great value and should offer programs to teach people digital skills.2 The great news is that many libraries across the United States already do this, from computer classes to coding workshops. Still, with nearly all these offerings happening within the physical library space, those 29 percent of low technology adopters who do not visit the library are being left behind. Even the majority of library visitors are not participating in technology-based programming; only 27 percent of patrons attended a library program in 2016.3 We need to discover a new way of providing access to technology and technology training in order to reach all our citizens who are in need.

FEAR OF TECHNOLOGY

One of the primary reasons people avoid technology is fear. This fear keeps many people from even connecting to the Internet and becomes stronger in the face of emerging high-tech tools. Such strong feelings of apprehension based on a perceived threat may cause people to feel too embarrassed to come into a library to ask for help.

Although it may be easy for most of us to think of a library as a safe and welcoming place, the library can be intimidating for those who do not understand how it works or what it has to offer. On top of that, there is a psychological cost to asking for help. People may feel uncomfortable seeking help, either because they think they might be bothering someone or because they are afraid of being seen as incompetent.4 Lots of people experience fear surrounding technology—fear of the unknown, of failing, of looking like a fool. Such fears are compounded when people are faced with learning something new in an unfamiliar, public space.

In 2015, Chapman University released its Survey of American Fears. The top three fears concerned technology. Christopher Bader, a professor of sociology at the university, explains:

People tend to express the highest level of fear for things they’re dependent on but that they don’t have any control over, and that’s almost the perfect definition of technology. You can no longer make it in society without using technology you don’t understand to buy things at a store, to talk to other people, to conduct business. People are increasingly dependent, but they don’t have any idea how these things actually work.5

If people need to interact with technology in order to navigate in this world but are too fearful to adopt the technology or learn how to use it, then we are faced with a major inequality within our society. Many technologies, and primarily the Internet, are our main sources for information gathering. We have to ensure that all of our residents know how to safely and confidently navigate through the high-tech world we are living in. One way we can do this is to go into the streets, meeting people where they already feel comfortable gathering.

BRINGING TECHNOLOGY INTO THE STREETS

Outreach is nothing new to libraries. Public libraries have acted as bridges out into communities for nearly as long as they have been active. In 1905, Mary Titcomb became the first to introduce the bookmobile to her community in the United States.6 Titcomb identified a need for access to books in the remote rural areas of Washington County, Maryland. She was awarded a Carnegie grant of $2,500 that she used to create the nation’s first outreach service. Since then, librarians all around the world have been seeking new ways to go beyond the walls of their libraries to serve people directly in the community.

Traditionally, library outreach has taken a few different forms, with the main purpose being to promote library services, not to deliver those services directly. Many of you will be familiar with this standard awareness-based type of outreach: Your library sends a librarian, you, to a community event or meeting to man a table that is stocked with leaflets and fliers about services and events back at the library. This style of outreach is all about marketing. Your job is to raise awareness about what the library is doing within its walls or through its website. Sometimes a small activity may also take place at the booth as a means to lure people in for a longer discussion about what the library has to offer.

Many libraries are taking this style of outreach one step further by setting up laptops and Wi-Fi hot spots in order to sign up people for library cards. This transforms an awareness-based outreach model into a service-based outreach model. These are some of the other common outreach programs that fall into this category:

• › Storytimes
• › Library instruction
• › Bookmobiles
• › Homebound delivery

One of the newest types of service-based outreach uses technology. Traditional bookmobiles are being converted into computer labs or technology filled buses. Librarians are teaching patrons how to use e-readers and check out e-books in addition to the standard library database instruction. This movement into technology-based outreach is what we’ll be covering in this book. It can be the most intimidating type of outreach, but also the most rewarding.

Leaving the library to do outreach always presents a whole new set of challenges. Adding technology brings in an extra level of complexity. You might not even know where to begin beyond knowing that you want to offer some sort of technology-based outreach. That’s okay! We’ll begin in the next chapter by learning about the fundamentals that you will need to create successful technology-based outreach programs.

NOTES

1. Monica Anderson, “Digital Divide Persists Even as Lower-Income Americans Make Gains in Tech Adoption,” Pew Research Center, “Fact Tank,” March 22, 2017, www.pewresearch.org/​fact-tank/​2017/​03/​22/​digital-divide-persists-even-as-lower-income-americans-make-gains-in-tech-adoption.

2. John B. Horrigan, “Libraries 2016,” Pew Research Center, “Internet and Technology,” September 9, 2016, www.pewinternet.org/​2016/​09/​09/​libraries-2016.

3. Ibid., under “2. Library Usage and Engagement.”

4. Bella M. Depaulo and Jeffrey D. Fisher, “The Costs of Asking for Help,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 1 (March 1980): 23–35.

5. Cited in Cari Romm, “Americans Are More Afraid of Robots Than Death,” The Atlantic, October 16, 2015, www.theatlantic.com/​technology/​archive/​2015/​10/​americans-are-more-afraid-of-robots-than-death/​410929.

6. Nancy Smiler Levison, “Takin’ It to the Streets: The History of the Book Wagon,” Library Journal 116 (May 1991): 43–45.

2

OUTREACH FUNDAMENTALS

Technology-based outreach gives us the opportunity to offer a new set of programs to parts of our communities that may have very little interaction with the library. We can bring the high-level technology programming we are already offering within the walls of the library to new populations, meeting them in familiar areas where they are the most comfortable...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Bridging the Digital Divide
• 2. Outreach Fundamentals
• 3. Technology-Based Outreach Planning
• 4. Design Thinking
• 5. Best Practices for Design
• 6. Design Thinking Exercises: A Path to Creative Problem Solving
• 7. Planning Technology-Based Outreach: A Design Thinking Journey from Start to Finish
• 8. Technology Outreach in Practice: Real-World Case Studies
• Resources
• Index