On 12/12/06, Michel J. Menou <Michel.Menou@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
What I'm wondering is whether this is an anomalous situation or part of a larger trend. I'm aware that numerous public libraries house Community Technology Centers, but I have no information on how many of these began life as independent projects and how many were library initiatives from the start.
Can you please offer a working definition for "Community Technology Centers?" I assume you are speaking of projects that differ appreciably from traditional computer labs or computing clusters. Pending a firm definition, there are two trends that may may relate to this topic: 1. It appears that the concept of merging libraries and IT organizations has been a trend for several years, particularly among smaller liberal arts institutions in the US. Oberlin definitely falls into that category as does my current institution, the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. Bryn Mawr has conducted a Merged Information Services Organizations survey with relevant data; information can be found at http://www.brynmawr.edu/miso/index.html. I suspect there may also be relevant data in the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service; the FY2005 summary was just released a few days ago and is available at http://www.educause.edu/apps/coredata/reports/2005/. 2. "Information Commons" appears to have become a buzzword in the last few years and it may be related to the CTC concept. I seem to remember seeing a few presentations at EDUCAUSE and other conferences on this topic. I'm sure a search will yield several relevant results. Kevin