Biblionews-participant-jordan-eschler
Jordan Christine Eschler
Master's student
University of Washington
Seattle WA
617-599-2594
As a Masters student in Information Management at the University
> of Washington, I am currently writing my thesis on the evolving public
> library mandate to act as a portal for eGovernment services. My work is
> partially based on the finding in the US Impact
> Survey<http://cis.washington.edu/usimpact/documents/OPP4ALL_FinalReport.pdf>that
> consumption of local news is an important metric in eGovernment and
> civic engagement in U.S. libraries (the Knight Digital Media Center has
> posted
> commentary<http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/leadership_blog/comments/20100402_new_report_examines_public_librarys_growing_role_as_online_civic_h
> />about
> this finding). The consumption of local news ^S and the future of local
> citizen journalism in public libraries ^S is one factor I am using to shape
> my thesis research related to successful eGovernment programs in libraries.
>
>
> I have also been involved in a program evaluation for the Knight Foundation
> related to grant making in public
> libraries<http://www.knightfoundation.org/initiatives/library.dot>,
> and have studied issues around boundaries between engagement and
> partisanship* *(regarding the matter of private grant making to publicly
> supported institutions), as well as envisioning libraries as public-access
> media centers (through programs to retrofit portions of library buildings as
> spaces to inspire collaboration).
>
>
> Finally, I believe that libraries offer rich information ecologies to foster
> and preserve free digital information commons through the following
> practices: (1) utilizing their spaces to promote collaboration and
> partnerships among community organizations, which will strengthen the
> digital information commons; (2) promoting digital literacy, most crucially
> the five key
> literacies<http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/howard-rheingold-keynote-speech-social-media-participative-pedagogy-and-digital-literaci
> es/>,
> according to Howard Rheingold; and (3) revisiting the allocation of library
> resources (digital, human, and otherwise) to address the changing mandate of
> libraries as places where an informed citizenry can be nurtured.
>
