US:PA-1: week 1 assignment
week 1 assignment
Cliff Farides (cfarides@jvbrown.edu)
Wed, 17 Sep 1997 10:14:42 -0400
Good Morning,
Thanks to Christopher Mendla for his insights that got me thinking...
1. What are the one or two most pressing needs of your PA school or library
for the implementation of effective and sustainable telecommunications programs.
As a consultant librarian married to a teacher, I have some insight into
both worlds...
Librarians will always say they need more training...and I have conducted
training in my library district and state wide for several years...the real
problem in my eyes is the lack of adequate staff. There are no shortcuts in
technology. The manuals must be read or at least taken out out of the shrink
wrap...each library needs time for the staff to get familiar with the new
program or equipment before unleashing it to the public...and yet time is
the most precious resource. In my eleven county district, we put out (with
the aid of a state grant) 45 computers in 45 public libraries. More than
half of those computers went to libraries that did not have a computer
before...then with the Bell Grants, we had a second wave of 30 more
computers...bringing the internet to some of the more remote places in the
commonwealth.
Given time and staff, librarians can learn the technology.
Now for my two-cents on schools, my wife teaches in a school district
located in a "town" that is considered cutting edge in telecommunication
applications...however, in her middle school classroom, she has an ancient
APPLE IIGS...and no phone connection to the outside world. (Channel One is
piped into her classroom, but not the Internet. I won't rave about that, but
the educational value of candy bar commercials versus the resources of
Internet is easy to judge.)
Her school district paid for her second masters degree in Library Science
where she learned the current applications of technology for education and
libraries...but she does not have the resources in her classroom to tap into
the information highway. She has the training, but not the resources. (She
even lugs her own Powerbook to school for her kids to work on during study
halls.) I do not think my wife's situation is unique in the Commonwealth.
2. How do the needs of schools and libraries differ, and how are they
complimentary?
Patron records in a library are guarded by Federal and State laws...the need
for privacy in a library is an absolute constant.
The urban library where I have my office, had over 2000 children enrolled in
the summer reading program...we had kids everywhere during the summer...I
would hazard a guess that libraries are even more important as resource
centers and homework centers than ever before...and kids know about the
Internet...a typical reference question now a days goes like this: "Can I
get on the Internet? I want a picture of George Washington."
We can answer that question with paper sources, but our customers have
forgotten paper even exists...if it is not electronic or on the web, it
can't be real.
I should also mention that the Brown Library brings in over a thousand
people each day six days a week and last Sunday we had 490 patrons check out
materials in 4 hours and all of our seven internet stations and our WebTV
station were in use for those four hours.
As VP Gore keeps saying, Libraries are the safety net of the information
age...and we see it here everyday. (Another sidebar: during the day, we
noticed a higher level of men in the building...men using the Internet and
then finding that the library is not that
bad of a place to hang out...we have free coffee in our reading rooms and
comfy chairs everywhere.)
3. How do the needs of rural school and libraries differ from those of
schools and libraries in urban areas?
Mr Mendla nailed that problem right on the head: Tioga County. When I read
the Statewide vision statement for Links2Learn...the story about the family
in the northern tier stuck home in the blizzard...but the entire family
functions through the Internet...my first thought was that it described
Westfield, PA perfectly...but one minor detail is that Westfield is unserved
by local ISPs, Regional ISPs, or even national ISPs. Till the electronic
highway follows Route Six just as it follows the Turnpike, rural communities
are going to be in the cold and dark areas of the Info Age. (Incidentally,
Westfield is served by a nationally known Non-Bell phone service.)
I must admit though, that in my district, which runs from the NY border to
Selinsgrove, Westfield is the only place without an ISP. However, ATM, ISDN,
Fiber...it may be far into the next century before that stuff hits the
Northern Tier.
Cliff Farides
Cliff Farides
District Consultant
North Central Library District
Home Email: cjf@technologist.com
Phone: 717-326-0536
Fax: 717-323-6938