News

June 27, 2012

As discussed in a previous post, communications & leisure tops the list of uses for public access ICT. While this is not surprising, use of public access venues for communications & leisure is often frowned upon, especially if the venue is publicly funded or has a development mission. Funders, governments, and non-governmental organizations of public access venues would often like to see lower use in the communications domain and higher use in other “development” domains such as government, health, and employment & income. The reality, however, is that communication activities, such as the use of social networking sites and emailing with family and friends, remain high across all types of venues. But does this mean other public access venue objectives, such as developing ICT skills and filling information gaps, aren’t being met? How do communications & leisure activities contribute to other objectives of public access initiatives?

TASCHA research on the role of public libraries and telecenters during a disaster was presented on June 23 at the 2012 American Library Association (ALA) conference as part of the panel, “Expecting the Unexpected: Libraries Respond to Profound Change.” iSchool PhD candidate, Beth Patin, participated on the panel on behalf of the research team behind the Libraries, Telecenters, and the 2010 Chile Earthquake research project.

June 22, 2012

We are pleased to announce the launch of our new site. As an organization that studies technology use around the world, it was an interesting journey to develop a system for our own center. We of course wanted the site to tell the TASCHA story, convey all the right information, be easy to navigate, and…

The magnificent and brilliant Silvia Caicedo (who needs to start a blog already) sent me this based on a conversation we had where I was freaking out about helping civil society organizations use social media and cloud services. Let me explain: I am a geek. I love tech. I’m often the first one to start […]

June 21, 2012

In Digital Activism 101, Mary Joyce writes that activists can use digital technology to do only five things: shape public opinion, plan an action, protect activists, share a call to action, or take action. Then rinse and repeat. (Heh I love that phrase; stole it from Gunner’s awesome Another Cloud is Possible presentation.) Five seems to […]

June 19, 2012

Global Impact Study Principal Investigator, Chris Coward, presented some of the study’s findings at the Libraries for Innovation conference in Vilinus, Lithuania on June 7, 2012. Chris presented on findings from the user survey, as well as top line findings from two in-depth studies, Mobile Internet and Infomediaries. Representatives from the Lithuanian library program highlighted achievements made over the past five years, as well as areas they intend to focus on moving forward. We’ll be posting more on the findings presented in the coming weeks, but for those who just can’t wait, you can download the presentation slides. Stay tuned for more presentations from the Global Impact Study… next up: IFLA 2012.

June 18, 2012

The Global Impact Study is mainly looking at six development domains: communications & leisure, culture & language, education, employment & income, government, and health. Communications & leisure is the number one used domain, followed closely by education. Employment & income use is high as well, with over 40% of all public access users surveyed using public access for activities in this domain. More episodic uses and perhaps less available in some countries, such as culture & language, health, and government, see less use.

June 15, 2012

My colleague Maria Garrido and her team finished a long investigation into the role that ICT hubs played in the wake of the Chilean earthquake. The earthquake was massive. Communities were cut off from each other and as people tried to secure assistance and contact loved ones, ICTs played an important role. While cybercafés, telecenters, […]

In civil society spaces, particularly for NGOs and funders who feel pressure to tout/justify their own impact, incentives to share content are often mixed. Organizations and individuals are often torn. Post to someone else’s site increases exposure to a particular post, but also imposes opportunity costs — eyeballs are not drawn to their site. Facebook […]

June 11, 2012

On May 11, 2012, the Ministry of Justice of Georgia launched the “Computer Knowledge Society Initiative” to promote digital literacy and e-skills, with a focus on economic development. Will they build on learning from other countries? How can the global library and telecentre communities help them succeed?