Digital divide

More issues than I know what to do with

May 25th

Posted by Hana in Authorship/publishing

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The library and information profession isn’t facing just those issues I listed a couple of posts back.  There’s more than that.  I have, just this morning, started another assignment topic for my assignment that is due tonight by midnight.  That brings the total to four.  Four running assignments, that I have going for the purposes of this assignment?!

What is it that I want to convey?  There is simply a lot to write about, a lot of issues, not just contemporary ones, or labelled as such, that are facing the profession in the “information age”.  And what is the information age anyway?  Define that please.

My assignment topics so far are as follows:

  • “Feeling Overloaded? Experiencing #Filterfail?  It could be time to change your settings.”
    I shouldn’t really have to explain it, but I have to, so I’ve already failed in one aspect of this assignment, – supply a title that accurately reflects the content of your paper.  I like to see html markup out of context, it’s interesting to me. 
  • “Education in Information Literacy, the answer to our digital divide”
  • “Information Overload and the Information Professional’s role: how Librarian’s can help”and my latest one…
  • “User pays, the digital divide and freedom of access to information : economics and the public library”
See, the thing is, I’m quite happy writing up to 500 or so words on a topic and having a mini rant, because that’s what I’m capable of spurting out.  But anything noteworthy and academic, I don’t see myself as capable of.  I would love love love to write professionally, and produce something worth publishing in an academic journal, open access or not.  I would love that.  But with my current attention span, I’m not sure if I can.

I’m just going to flesh out my ideas here.  See, I am taking this paper because I want to get further, academically and professionally and .. publishy.. than where I am currently.  I want to get to that goal, of writing, for aliving?? Do I?  aaarrggh sidetracked!  I want to write about Information overload because it is something I experience most days.  Information overload is a challenge I face that not necessarily the rest of the information management profession is facing.  I want to write about it, and it’s facets including anxiety, but I don’t know if I alone, can provide any solutions.  I don’t know if there are any perfect solutions to it.  Is that what this assignment asked of us?  To provide a solution to the challenge?  If I personally, was attending a conference titled, “Issues in the Information Age: the challenge for the information management profession”, I would be going for sessions that actually had a little bit of fun in them, that weren’t all dry.  I do not want to be that person who write dry papers!

Recently I attended a workshop on  Career Management and I can’t say I got much out of it, other than meeting some interesting people.  Some there were interesting, some were depressive.  I was drawn to the interesting people because that’s what lifts me up.  I don’t want to write a paper on a depressing subject.

Alright, so… lively Hana will present a paper on Information Overload.  How to counteract it?  Ok cool.  That sounds manageable.  But there’s another issue that we need to cover in our assignment.  Yes, another!  How can I include another when the other is on Information Overload?  I already feel overloaded!
Guh….!

Journal Submission : Part Two : Small Task on the Digital Divide

May 24th

Posted by Hana in Digital divide

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Why is charging a fee for services a controversial issue?

My Answer: because it brings a “divide” for access to information between those that have the money to pay for access to the information, and those that don’t, effectively saying that if you don’t have money, you can’t have equal access to information and possibly improving your personal circumstances that dictate where you are in society currently.

Wow, what a long answer.. (might reword this later)

Explain the term ‘digital divide’ and identify sections of New Zealand society most affected by it.

My Answer: The digital divide is the space in society that exists between those that know how to and can competently use Information Communication Technologies to their advantage and those that don’t. Sections of society that are most affected by it are low socio-economic groups, Maori, low income households and new immigrants. How people get to be identified as being in a low socio-economic group is another story.

How do you think the networked society has contributed to the distinction? Can you identify other factors that have contributed to the widening gap between these two groups?

My Answer: The networked society has exacerbated the differences between these groups and information and ICT literate individuals.
Other factors:

  • local and central government policies changing with changes of government over the years
  • economic recessions causing shrinking of budgets and services available – “streamlining”

Have you encountered information-poor users?  If so, how did you identify them as being information-poor, and how did you need to help them to ensure that they received and understood the information they required?

My Answer: Yes, by simple observation.  Talked to them at their level, and ask clarifying questions to ensure that you are answering their [information] needs.

Journal Submission : Part Two

May 24th

Posted by Hana in Digital divide

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The issues that are covered in the Learning Guide are set out as:

  1. User pays and the digital divide
  2. Information literacy
  3. Biculturalism
  4. Information overload (and information anxiety)
  5. Misinformation
  6. Freedom of information (Intellectual freedom and censorship)
  7. Freedom of information (Privacy and access)
  8. Intellectual property
These issues have arisen in my workplace, definitely.  In fact, I see the reality of the first two every day working in a lower socio economic community, which in turn relates to numbers 4 and 5 also.  I won’t go into details, but I do wonder, why some people don’t try and stop the cycles that seemingly run their lives.  It’s a very general saying, but I really don’t want to speak out on what I see at work every day in case someone’s listening… I don’t have the answers to some people’s predicaments, and I’m not God, so I won’t say that I can solve people’s problems, because I can’t.  I can only assist in guiding, really.
I try to help with information literacy, and literacy every day at work in assisting people, the public, in using freely available resources that we provide access to.  I take a preschool storytime session once a week, which I’m beginning to be really glad that I decided to take it on.  The joy you get from seeing children learn and interact with other children and adults is immense.  It makes my eyes water.  Some day I’ll have the responsibility of raising my own children and I sure as hell am going to try and use every free opportunity for learning by way of interacting with professionals and other kids, and just generally people that actually give a shit about how kids develop!  I’m beginning to see the need for me to provide the best preschool storytime service I can, in order to not waste anyone’s time or investment.
I can’t remember off the top of my head, what thoughts I had last on the discussions that were happening in my online communities, or what those online communities even were… hold on, I’ve found this handy link…
Here are my chosen online communities to follow and here’s my decision to leave one of them, PUB-SIG recently, though, funnily enough, I recently joined pub-sig again, but only for work purposes, and that was to advertise an event for the Wellington LIS community.
You would think that I might do my forthcoming (forth due…?) assignment on the digital divide and information literacy, but I really wanted to do something that is set away from the realities I face at work every day.  I would rather spend my time outside of work writing about something not to do with work.  So my chosen assignment topic on a makebelieve conference paper on “Issues facing the information management profession today” is on,
“Information overload and the Information Professional : how Librarian’s can help”.


Will keep you posted on how that’s going, however I just tweeted something today (now continuing writing this on Monday 24 May, 2010), which suggests that I haven’t got very far with this at all… 

*Sigh*

Completed readings today (Monday)

Mar 15th

Posted by Hana in Digital divide

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Reading 1.3:

Kirk, J. (2000, July). Navigating the information society. Paper presented at the IATUL conference: Virtual libraries, Virtual communities. Retrieved February 14, 2005, from http://www.iatul.org/conference/proceedings/vol10/papers/kirk_full.html.

Highlighted quotes from this one were:

Libraries emerged as our second most popular cultural venue after cinemas. (Kirk, 2000, p. 3)

 

Some would have us believe that the technologies are a force for good and that our lives will be transformed if only we would adopt them, the sooner the better. (Kirk, 2000, p. 4) 

 

“This is the surge economy where more business is condensed into seconds than used to get done in a day, and the only constant is change…” (Time magazine cited in Kirk, 2000, p. 4) 

 

I assume that you have been involved in digital library initiatives in your own university libraries. I would ask you to reframe one of these as a networking project designed to connect the library with its users of electronic information resources and then to consider what is omitted when the initiative is conceptulaised only as a networking project. (Kirk, 2000, p. 7) 

RE: the digital divide between the North and South in terms of access to information

“We have got rid of skin colour-based apartheid but are now facing the emergence of an information access-based apartheid” (cited in Kirk, 2000, p. 11) 

This last one is from Chris Duke, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney. He cautions us to not be,

“dazzled by the sunrise of the virtual universe low over the eastern horizon and blinded to the way ahead – the road beneath our feet” (Duke, cited in Kirk, 2000, p. 12)

I think that’s a lovely sentiment, very poetic.