My third and final day of Computers in Libraries 2011 began with a keynote by perennial favorite Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet and American Life project. Mr. Rainie always has interesting and valuable insights in trends in Internet and technology use by the population as a whole, and this year was no exception.
The first interesting point was the although they continue to grow, both Internet usage and broadband adoption in the United States have flattened out considerably. Internet usage flattened out as of some time in 2007 and broadband adoption started flattening out in 2009. As adoption of broadband has flattened out it has become clear that there are certain segments of the population which still are slow to adopt this technology and Mr. Rainie identified these as those with a high school degree or less, those over 65, persons who when interviewed prefer to interview in Spanish, the disabled, and African-Americans.
Using this as groundwork, Mr. Rainie proceeded to start to identify areas where libraries can show that they bring value to their communities, the first way being by helping to fill in some of these internet access divides in the population.
Throughout his talk Rainie built on this groundwork and identified the following additional ways that libraries can bring value to their communities:
libraries can embed themselves into peoples attention zones so we can connect with people in what he called the “golden age of amateur experts” and help them in “deep dives” into their subject areas or as they “info snack”
libraries can embed themselves into media zones and social streams to participate in users study and work space
libraries can be nodes in social networks as sentries of information where word of mouth matters more
libraries can act in social network modes as information evaluators where they can help vouch for or discredit a business's credibility and authenticity
libraries can be teachers of new literacies such as screen literacy (graphics and symbols), navigation literacy, how to create content, and teachers of what is ethical in a new world
libraries can help fill in civic gaps and help people perform “the big sort” among institutions and on news and the information landscape
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