PL 58/08: Reports from the frontline

What’s happening at the front?

Mizuko Ito (right) headed the MacArthur project.

The most advanced thinking and writing about libraries is not published in books, but in blogs, project reports and digital newsletters and journals.

Blogs catch our discussions in mid-air, so to speak. The best professional  blogs embody change as it occurs. Newsletters like Ariadne and journals like D-Lib Magazine report on change – with a minimum of delay. Both channels are essential for keeping in touch with developments in the field.

But I turn to the best project reports and surveys for confirmation. In this type of document we find the developed arguments and the supporting data we need to promote change in the library environment.

The last big report I’ve read was produced by the MacArthur Foundation. It covers the same type of issues as the the recent British Library report on the researcher of the future and the regular Pew reports on Internet and American Life. But it is larger, deeper and more ethnographic in its approach. This means it delves much more deeply into the culture that is developing around digital media.

For more info, see the post Living and learning at the LATINA web site.

For a choice of formats, you may

• Read the press release.
• Read a two-page overview of the study (PDF).
• Read the 30-page white paper.
• Read the full study on the Digital Youth Project’s website.
• Watch a video interview with the study’s lead researcher, Dr. Mizuko Ito.

Source: MacArthur Foundation. Building the Field of Digital Media and Learning (latest news).

Note

I found 20 photos of Mizuko (Mimi) Ito at Flickr. Eighteen of them were published under a CC license. Bliss, indeed.

Resources

• Pioneering research shows Google generation is a myth. British Library, January 16., 2008.
• British Library. Information behaviour of the researcher of the future. PDF
• On the Record: Report of The Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control (January 9, 2008). Press release
• Changing Roles of Academic and Research Libraries. This essay derives from a Roundtable on Technology and Change in Academic Libraries, convened by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) on November 2-3, 2006 in Chicago.
• College Students’ Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources: A Report to the OCLC Membership A Companion Piece to Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., 2005.

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