(This paper was presented at Ties That Bind: Converging Communities, a conference sponsored by Apple Computer, Inc. and the Morino Institute, at the Apple Conference Center in Cupertino, California, May 2-5, 1995. Proceedings of that conference were edited by Steve Cisler).
We have chosen an automobile/highway metaphor for this presentation-- a map, a model, and a license--to present a framework for discussing the Flint Community Networking Initiative. This emerging community network is a collaboration between the University of Michigan School of Information and Library Studies (SILS) Cristal-Ed Program, the Apple Library of Tomorrow, the Flint Public Library and a number of other key players such as the Mideastern Michigan Library Cooperative, the Community Stabilization and Revitalization Project, and the Library of Michigan.
The automobile/highway metaphor, we believe, is appropriately chosen for Flint, known by many as Buick city. We think of the map as a blueprint or framework for thinking about our new community networking venture; the model focuses on the role of the public library and the approaches it takes to networking; and, finally, the license is the analogy used for looking at a key component of this project--training. We believe all three components are crucial to the success of the Flint Community Networking Initiative and community networking in general.
Community networks, made possible by rapidly changing information technology, are in their infancy. The first international community networking conference, Ties that Bind, was held here in the spring of 1994. Its organizer, Steve Cisler, wrote at that time, "few people are aware of the concept of community computing networks, any more than people understood . . . electricity in 1890." As Cisler indicated, community networks have the potential of being as important to the 21st century as electricity has been to the 20th century.
The University of Michigan and other research institutions are in the process of developing new technologies designed to advance dramatically the means to collect, store, and organize information in digital forms and make it available in user-friendly ways. These projects reach out first to researchers, faculty, and students. They build on the availability of high performance computing capabilities and a culture which values and uses information.
Access is linking users with needed data, information, and knowledge through the use of technology. This concept of access is the framework for education at the University of Michigan School of Information and Library Studies. Its logo reflects these concepts.
The philosophy and approach at SILS is to provide students with problem centered educational experiences. We think of community networking as a way of extending the focus on library and information science education to the needs of citizens and communities.
In our curriculum...
At UM-SILS there are several ways that students can gain the knowledge they need to become providers of community information. They can take general courses such as organization of information, database development, or courses in the development of content on the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) such as the Internet Public Library or a course which focuses specifically on Community Networking--ILS 725.
The Community Networking class provides an opportunity for students to develop knowledge of community information and skills needed to provide it. The course has evolved from one which Joan Durrance developed several years ago which focused on social service community information systems. The tremendous gains in community networking technologies have resulted in major changes in the content of the class.
The course as it is now designed includes an introduction to the concepts and technologies used in providing access to community information. ILS 725 covers ways to assess, anticipate and respond to community information needs. The course also focuses on current issues in the provision of community information, particularly in digital formats, access issues, librarians' roles, and collaborative approaches to working with others to increase access to community information.
Students gain knowledge of networked community information by exploring different kinds of community information systems and examining appropriate listservs such as COMMUNET (communet@uvmvm.uvm.edu). Students gain skill in increasing access to community information through creating relevant WWW documents in conjunction with community groups.
Community Networking (CN) is taught each spring at SILS. Students in this class and in a number of others approach their learning through team-developed projects. The Community Networking Home Page started as a way to present the products of the CN class.
The CN home page captures some of the Web based projects created by student teams in the Spring 1994 class. In addition to developing prototype community networking WWW pages, the students created WWW pages for the Greater Detroit Free-Net, the community of Brighton, Michigan., the Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living, and Washtenaw County AIDS/HIV information resources. Students also worked with several public libraries to assist them in developing their first WWW presence. The Spring 1995 Community Networking Class is just beginning.
In Experiential and Continuing Education...
Other SILS community networking opportunities include doctoral and master's fellowships in community networking using funds from the University of Michigan Kellogg CRISTAL-ED Initiative--the Coalition on Reinventing Information Science, Technology and Library Education.
Students can also work on research projects, field experiences and internships at the developing Flint Community Networking Initiative and other Community Networking sites (such as Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Battle Creek, Michigan.).
In addition, practicing librarians who wish to add this skill to their repertoire may enroll in the SILS Internet Institute Series during 1995 which will include a workshop on Community Networking.
In Community Service...
Community networking is an important component of the kinds of service which we provide to librarians and to people in the state of Michigan.
During the 1994-95 year, Joan Durrance has participated in at least a half a dozen presentations in communities and conferences and brought the community networking message. Because communities cannot fully participate in community networks without adequate infrastructure, in the spring of 1994 SILS and the Michigan Library Association sponsored a Satellite Town Meeting to focus on preparing Michigan citizens and institutions for the information superhighway. Nearly 800 librarians attended the conference in 20 sites across the state. This conference resulted in ongoing collaborative efforts aimed at assisting communities to develop adequate information infrastructure.
In March of this year, Steve Cisler delivered the annual UM-SILS Beta Phi Mu Lecture on Community Networking to a full house in Ann Arbor and presented a speech the next day in Flint to an overflow crowd who came to witness the ribbon cutting for the new Flint Community Networking Initiative.
In Research...
The $4.3 million dollar, five-year University of Michigan SILS Kellogg CRISTAL-ED Project has an ambitious aim--to provide national leadership in educating human resources for the information professions of the 21st century. During this time, SILS will build a national, multi-disciplinary collaborative consortium to define new professional specializations to serve society's needs for information access in the rapidly emerging age of digital data, information, and knowledge.
This ambitious grant includes pilot projects which will serve as living laboratories, demonstrate rapid prototyping, explore the concept of distance independent learning, stress collaboration and team building, and be at the forefront in deploying new technologies.
The Flint Community Networking Initiative is the first pilot project of this grant. The aims of this project are to:
The Flint Community Networking Initiative incorporates emerging information technologies used at UM-SILS. We are focusing heavily on a training component. Our approach is collaborative. Our partners so far include the University of Michigan (in Ann Arbor and Flint), the Kellogg Foundation, the Apple Library of Tomorrow, the Flint Public Library, the Mideastern Michigan Library Cooperative which represents all kinds of libraries in three counties, the Community Stabilization and Revitalization project, and the Library of Michigan. We are also working closely with the Greater Flint Education Consortium and the fledgling Genesee Free-Net. Our emerging community network will be WWW based. It assumes distributed computing. It also assumes a proactive, collaborative library community building on what librarians do so well--identifying, organizing, and providing access to information needed by citizens.
Modeling a car is a natural metaphor for Community Networking in Flint because Flint is the birthplace of General Motors. Flint's economy continues to be most dependent on building cars. Flint may be medium sized in terms of population, but Flint is a full-sized car to the world. You see, the Buick LeSabre and Park Avenue are built in Flint. This dependency on the auto industry has made the Flint metro area the 10th highest in average wage, yet 45% of the children living in Flint live below the poverty level.
As a car acquires some rust spots over time, so does a city. Flint has "rust spots" as any other urban city. These are suburban sprawl surrounding an inner city blight; crime; teen pregnancy; aging population; declining school enrollment; diminishing tax base; etc. What was depicted in the movie, Roger & Me, is true, but only partially true. There is so much more to Flint than assembly lines, coney islands, bowling alleys, and a lady who raises rabbits for food.
Yes, Flint has some glimmer and shine that any new car might have. This shine can be seen in the several institutions of higher education that call Flint home. Some of them are known internationally--GMI Engineering & Management Institute, University of Michigan-Flint, Baker College, and Mott Community College. This shine can be seen in the internationally known Festival of Races each August, known as The Crim that draws tens of thousands of people from all over the world to watch and participate in a series of races for runners and walkers. Or there is the Flint Art Fair, the Sloan Museum Antique Car Fair, the Summer Jazz Festival, and the prestigious Buick Open, a PGA tour event held at the Warwick Hills Country Club.
Flint is the home of the C. S. Mott Foundation and the Ruth Mott Fund that combined have assets of nearly $1.5 billion.
Adjacent to the downtown area is a nationally acclaimed Cultural Center that consists of a planetarium, an art institute, a museum, an institute of music, a radio station, a community meeting hall, and an all-purpose auditorium that seats 2000. These share a campus with another cultural institution, the Flint Public Library.
Serving a unique and diverse population of 140,761, composed almost equally of Whites and African Americans, with smaller percentages of Native American, Asians and Hispanics, The Flint Public Library actively strives to be a relevant and important resource for Flint. The Library continues to uphold, as it has for the last 144 years, the fundamental principles that make public libraries public libraries. It is open and nonjudgmental to those who enter its doors. It provides a full spectrum of knowledge and opinions recorded by man. It is free. Maintaining these principles is no small feat, particularly in light of today's competitive environment, the ever increasing complexity of society, and diminishing sources of financial support.
But, we at the Library are continuously "building a better model." It is a model that is within reach of all. It is a model that appeals to a rich diversity of tastes and interests. It is a model that has collected sufficient resources and made them available to the community. It is a model in providing relevant services and programs. It is a model of taking very seriously the business of an "informed citizenry."
To be this model then, the Flint Public Library staff has developed over the years collaborative relationships with various agencies and groups out in the community. This is particularly so under the leadership of the current director, Gloria Coles. From these partnerships, the Library staff has been able continuously to bring to the community a whole host of opportunities to learn, to enjoy, and to experience.
For example, the staff partnered with Region 1-C of the United Automobile Workers of America in showcasing the "Writers Live At the Library" series that highlighted minority writers of prose and poetry. For each author, there was also another group that assisted in promoting the program. The Genesee Indian Center, for example, helped sponsor James Welch, a Native American writer.
Sparked by the donation of 5 computers from a local opthamologist, funds were secured from a trust managed by a local bank, Citizens Bank, to support computer training for individuals over 55. When this successful, multiyear project was completed, a partnership was formed with the Genesee Valley Area Agency on Aging. This provided an intensive computer literacy program for those senior citizens who needed to obtain newer skills to stay atop of a competitive work force. So what began as a simple donation, became a collaborative effort with different partners, which reached a particular segment of the population in need.
Several years ago when unemployment was high because of the laying off of thousands of workers at various General Motors' plants in the area, the Flint Public Library staff was able to offer a specialized service to those who were in need of skills in looking for a job, in seeking further education, in changing careers, even in writing that all-important resume and cover letter. This was initially funded by a three-year grant from Kellogg.
A bookmobile was purchased two years ago from funds that came from the City of Flint and from the Friends of the Flint Public Library. Since day one, the bookmobile has been making inroads to areas of the city where people had not been served before.
For the children of the city of Flint, the staff has been most aggressive in developing partnerships. The Community Foundation, Mott Children's Health Center, Department of Social Services, Headstart Program, and Flint Community Schools are just a few of the agencies with whom the Library staff has worked to promote literacy and instill a joy of reading. Each year, a cadre of storytellers representing the Library reaches thousands of children ages one on up.
These examples and more illustrate the natural affinity the Flint Public Library and its staff have in developing people networks with the community at large. So, developing computer networks is a natural and logical extension.
This brings us to the most profound and far-reaching project this Library has ever done, and that is the Flint Community Networking Initiative.
The automobile revolutionized and changed the face and character of our country and the world--physically, socially, economically. Electronics and the creation of cyberspace, as you know, are rapidly revolutionizing and changing the face and character of our country and the world, again. This is awesome.
It was obvious to us that in order to keep pace with the revolution and continue to be a relevant information provider in our community, we as a library and as a staff needed to be educated and trained in the emerging technologies, specifically the Internet. What we soon discovered is that we have the potential through the Internet to access, organize, and retrieve information from around the world. Furthermore, it followed that this state-of-the-art technology could be used to re-create our local community. With this in mind, we turned to the mapmakers at UM-SILS to help us chart a course for Flint Public Library and for the community it serves. Thus, the Flint Community Networking Initiative was born. This project has become an opportunity to build the best vehicle possible--a concept vehicle that can be a model for others to emulate in learning how to navigate and build cyberspace effectively and efficiently, and in blending the virtual and real communities together in a true community network.
Above all, the aspect of the Flint Community Networking Initiative which stands out in relation to other efforts that the Flint Public Library has been involved in, is our emphasis on training. That is an artifact of the history of the development of the project, but also a natural result considering the level of involvement by libraries and library schools. And well it should be. What good is the latest model car and a map if you can't drive?
With the help of the many collaborators already mentioned, the Flint Public Library is now home to an Internet Training and Community Networking Center. This lab has 18 PowerMacs with dedicated ISDN access to the Internet. We are in the process of acquiring a full complement of multimedia creation tools such as a digital camera, audio equipment, video cameras, and a scanner. The vision for this space and equipment is that it become a friendly meeting place which provides public access to the Internet, facilities for training a wide range of users, and a studio for the creation of community information resources.
We dedicated the Center on March 10 with an overflow crowd. Steve Cisler gave the keynote address and many Flint citizens saw the World Wide Web for the first time.
As the project develops, we will be reaching out to various groups in the community to offer training at several levels. Our first focus group has been librarians in Genesee County. Last fall, 30 area librarians received a general operator's license, having learned to access a wide range of Internet resources over a course of 8 instructional sessions.
Twenty of these librarians have continued this spring in a course of study designed to provide them the skills and confidence required to earn a chauffeurÕs license, which empowers them to guide and train their colleagues and the public in Internet use, as well as a license to design and publish their own resources on the WWW.
The syllabus includes advanced strategies for effective use of email, mastery of various protocols such as gopher, FTP, WAIS, and WWW in both a command line and graphical interface, as well as instruction in the creation of WWW documents. Students have identified projects to focus the practice of their new skills which will culminate in the production and mounting of WWW resources of their own design. The projects have a community focus including local recycling information, local government information, local sources of funding for small businesses, and local college scholarships.
This highly trained core will be instrumental in facilitating the next phases of training as they reach out to their colleagues and other community groups. Having invested "sweat equity" in building pieces of the virtual community, their enthusiasm and skills will be used as capital to spur further development. Over the course of this summer, we will be systematically targeting a diverse range of community groups and organizations, introducing them to community networking, issuing them operator's licenses, and, most importantly, licensing them with the skills necessary to employ the strategies of virtual community to build up and sustain our real community.
Prepared by:
Joan C. Durrance, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
University of Michigan, School of Information and Library Studies
email: durrance@umich.edu
Charles A. P. Hansen
Assistant Director
Flint Public Library
email: chansen@nova.gmi.edu
Sheryl Cormicle Knox
Coordinator
Flint Community Networking Initiative
email: sherylc@sils.umich.edu
Web page compiled by Emily K. Lenhart, elenhart@sils.umich.edu
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