Journal article
THE DIGITAL DIVIDE & PUBLIC LIBRARIES: a first-hand view
Progressive librarian, (25)
01 Jul 2005
Abstract
As a part of a research study I have been conducting over the past several months, I have visited branches of a large U.S. urban public library system and interviewed branch librarians about their resources and services. I've been to ten different branch libraries so far, and I have been stunned at the degree of variance in quality and quantity of digital resources. As a library school professor I have read numerous articles concerning the digital divide over the past decade or so and have always maintained that the problem is severe. I knew that poorer children were about three times less likely to have home computers than middle class children (Eamon, 2004), and that the Internet had served to widen the information gap between rich and poor, rather than bridge it as some had predicted (e.g. Wolf, 1998). Second, private residents in communities with greater economic power augment library-provided resources. For example, the librarian at Branch #2 said that recent system-wide budget cuts were having a drastic effect on her collection development efforts; her subsistence collection was getting even thinner. I asked the librarian at Branch #1 about the effect of budget cuts on her collection. "There haven't really been any," she explained. "The Friends of the Library has donated money to make up for lost funds." Thirdly, local commercial entities support libraries in communities with economic power. Commercial businesses have an interest in promoting themselves to populations that can pay for their goods and services. At Branch #1, the beautifully decorated and furnished children's area was called the "Verizon Children's Area," and a sign on the front door boasted about a recent $1,000 donation from a commercial retail chain with a store in the area. Few large businesses and commercial chains open franchises in impoverished areas where there is little discretionary spending, so corporate donations to underprivileged urban libraries are much rarer.
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Details
- Title
- THE DIGITAL DIVIDE & PUBLIC LIBRARIES: a first-hand view
- Creators
- Denise E Agosto
- Publication Details
- Progressive librarian, (25)
- Publisher
- Durland Alternatives Library; Lawrenceville
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Information Science (Informatics)
- Identifiers
- 991014976886104721