Museums, Archives, Libraries and Digital Inclusion
It is time to think big about future roles for Museums, Archives and Libraries in civic society.
Whatever the impact of the next 18 months on public subsidy for arts & culture, we need to be able to present a strong, confident and forward-looking vision of our role in and value to a society that is experiencing great change.
Of the current crop of Government agendas, one of the most active and potentially interesting for the culture sector is Race Online 2012, led by Martha Lane-Fox.
Lane-Fox’s mission is to ensure that the significant proportion (10m, of whom an estimated 4m are socially and economically disadvantaged) of the UK population that are not habitual users of technologies including the Internet are both able and motivated to get online and get involved in the Digital revolution.
Museums, archives and libraries have an interesting, and in some senses unique, role to play in British society. While there are many different kinds of institution that come under this heading, they nevertheless share some common features in that they are civic spaces, open, trusted and embedded into rural and urban communities - many of whom feel a strong sense of ownership of and attachment to them.
More than this, although they execute it differently, they have always shared a common mission of connecting people with knowledge - not just in an educative sense, but in a fundamentally empowering way. The promise of museums, archives and libraries is not to tell you the answers, but to help you form the questions, to pursue the answers, and to learn from the answers of previous generations.
All of this culminates in a Big Idea, which although big, is not actually all that new. The idea is to propose to Government a multi-annual, multi-million pound programme to enable museums, archives and libraries to drive Digital inclusion in their communities.
Building on the success of Renaissance in the Regions and investment in the public library infrastructure, such a programme could redefine the role of these organisations for a whole generation. Critically, much of the necessary infrastructure exists - through the Peoples Network in Public Libraries, the connectivity of local schools and UKOnline Centres.
So…what might such a programme involve? Well, rather than try and give an answer, I thought it might be best to ask the experts! I’ve put an open Google Doc online at: http://bit.ly/Dlwm1
There’s no login required - I know you are far more expert in this than me. Help us shape a truly world-class national programme for museums, archives and libraries to support Digital Inclusion!
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Hey Nick, really interesting post.
One thought, and it’s a very local thought, but I imagine that this situation is replicated elsewhere…. Here in sheffield we have a number of grassroots technology centres, most prominently AccessSpace (http://www.access-space.org/) who are at the centre of trying to address digital inclusion issues. IMO, these orgs are doing an amazing job with a miniscule budget in the grand scheme of things. My slight concern is that these grass roots organisations exist almost with the sole effect (Not so sure about purpose ;)) of closing the digital divide. Whatever MLA’s do in the area of inclusion (And comparatively, MLA’s are rich organisations indeed) I hope it’s sensitive and works with community driven initiatives like AccessSpace rather than being seen as “THE solution”. To me it’s important that MLA’s recognise that there are other charitable and non-commercial groups working in this area and that input from all groups is seen as part of a greater strategy in addressing digital divide issues.
On a related note… We’ve got this ultra high speed digitial region network appearing in south yorkshire over the coming months/years… Be worth following http://twitter.com/yorkhannah for info on digital divide issues in SY… Be really interested in knowing if the MLA’s have any cool content that could actually exercise this amazing network we are building.. as my gut feeling is that we’re going to be scratching our heads for good content when the network finally goes live.
Cheers,
e.
October 22nd, 2009 at 3:30 pm
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