A few people have mentioned that I’ve been unusually silent on the blog this year, they are correct. It’s been a crazy couple of years for me with this calendar year being the craziest of all. Although I haven’t been posting much here I have been busily writing and working away. For those who are curious here are a few of the things I’ve been up to this year:
Invited speaker on the ALA Annual ACRL University Libraries Section’s panel: The Librarian Has Left the Building: Keeping the Knowledge Alive through Succession Planning http://ala12.scheduler.ala.org/node/162
Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians from Traditionally Underrepresented Groups
Deards, K. D. (2012). Discovering, promoting and maintaining emerging technologies. A report of the LITA Emerging Technologies Interest Group meeting, American Library Association annual meeting, New Orleans, June 2011. Technical Services Quarterly, 29(2), 150-155. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07317131.2012.650952
Deards, K. (2012). Are nanomaterials dangerous? In Julia Rothman (Ed.), The where, the what & the how: 75 artists illustrate the wondrous mysteries of the universe. New York, NY: Chronicle Books.
A recurring theme in the sessions I attended at #scio12, and some after hours discussions, was technological infrastructure, and the need to remember that there is a huge digital divide between the haves and the have nots. It’s a problem you expect in developing nations (who we should be communicating with too, not ignoring), but you don’t expect that sort of problem in a country like the United States.
As we create activities and resources we need to remember that not all of our students have cell phones, not all students or researchers have Internet access depending on where they are in the US and the world.
A hot button for me is when people assume that all students have laptops and smartphones.? Just because some or even most students have something doesn’t mean that they all do, next time you want to assume something about technology that students have before asking, just don’t. Better yet provide the technology and access if it’s required for a course and not provided more broadly by your educational institution.
The other problem is Infrastructure, while modern cities have tons of infrastructure compared to rural areas in reality our infrastructure is substandard. Don’t believe me? Check out the Report Card for America’s Infrastructure and be prepared to be scared silly by how badly maintained our vital infrastructure has been maintained. Look at those grades, almost all D’s with a few C’s, the nation’s overall grade was a D, let’s think about that, just a little higher than an F for failed infrastructure. (In the 11 years since this blogpost was published the nation’s overall grade has “improved” to a C-). If we can’t even prioritize our water, energy and road safety and maintain them it’s no wonder that we are failing so many people in creating and maintaining our cyberinfrastructure.? The biggest barriers I am seeing to science communication, education, and innovation are a lack of infrastructure and technological inequality.
If you don’t have internet access and electricity it doesn’t matter if someone gives you a computer.
If you don’t have internet access it can be difficult, if not impossible, to apply for a job, to college, for government benefits, file your taxes for free.
Without the tech support, programers, and cutting edge computers many researchers will be limited to what they can do with what they have instead of innovating the future.
Without the ability to easily download, compare, and analyze multiple compounds from the large government databases our ability to find new relationships between these compounds is limited.
I can’t help wondering if our tendency to ignore of basic infrastructure needs is part of why we tend to treat cyberinfrastructure as something we can do later, when things get better, when we have more money, etc.
Disclaimer: I’m biased towards Japan being born there and part Japanese.
The first thing we need to do is admit that they exist and educate ourselves and everyone else that we can about these issues. Infrastructure isn’t just for librarians and scientists and tech geeks, it affects our ability to call for help in an emergency, the safety of our drinking water, and whether the bridges we drive over will bear our weight or collapse.
Once we admit openly and consistently that these problems exist we need to put our money and efforts towards these projects, infrastructure (traditional and cyber) is needed for safety, education, and a connected participatory society. If we don’t fund infrastructure that says that it’s not a necessity it’s a luxury, and that my friends is faulty thinking. Ignoring our infrastructure needs is almost as bad as cutting education funding (I will stay off that soap box for now, no raising the blood pressure before bed).
I don’t have any easy answers but I do know this:
We don’t all need to be on the cutting edge of technology but there is a certain minimal level of access without which it is difficult to fully participate in society. There is a level of IT support & infrastructure without which we will not reach our maximum research potential.
It’s a bit Pollyanna I suppose, but I’d really like to see all of us reach our full potential and we can’t do that without a strong base to stand on.
