Kim M. Thompson - Digital Literacy and Digital Inclusion: Information Policy and the Public Library

Digital Literacy and Digital Inclusion

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thompson, Kim M., 1971

Digital literacy and digital inclusion : information policy and the public library / Kim M. Thompson, Paul T. Jaeger, Natalie Greene Taylor, Mega Subramaniam, and John Carlo Bertot.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8108-9271-2 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-0-8108-9272-9 (ebook) 1. Information society. 2. Digital divide. 3. Information policy. 4. Electronic information resource literacy. 5. Technological literacy. 6. Information behavior. 7. Libraries and society. 8. Libraries and the Internet. 9. Internet access for library users. 10. Libraries and state. I. Jaeger, Paul T., 1974- II. Taylor, Natalie Greene, 1987- III. Subramaniam, Manimegalai M. IV. Bertot, John Carlo. V. Title.

HM851.T535 2014

303.48'33--dc23

2014009779

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Developed over many years of research, this book is the result of the support of many friends and colleagues. First, our editor Martin Dillon and the other folks at Rowman & Littlefield deserve credit and gratitude for their support for this project. Martin is supportive, encouraging, and timelyeverything an author hopes for in an editor.

We have worked, individually and collectively, with a range of collaborators over the years on work related to this book. Gary Burnett, as the co-creator of the Information Worlds theoretical framework used in this book, is the most notable influence. Additionally, collaborations with Denice Adkins, Waseem Afzal, Elizabeth DeCoster, Ursula Gorham, Renee Franklin Hill, Christie Kodama, Sarah Katz, and Melinda Whetstone have helped us formulate the ideas that are central to the discussions in this book. We also appreciate the information provided by John Stephen Agbenyo, Gifty Boakye, Nitida Carranza, Woojin Noh, Sanghee Oh, and Doris Santos that helped us to understand aspects of and verify the findings of the case studies.

We are grateful for the various forms of support given by all of the other staff members of Information Policy & Access Centeralong with the aforementioned Ursula and Christieat the University of Maryland while we were writing this book: June Ahn, Faith Ambrosini, Frank Bonnevier, Sarah Dammeyer, Jeff DiScala, Kristofer Dubbels, Rebecca Follman, Leahkim Gannett, Karen Kettnich, Jessica Koepfler, Michael Kurtz, Jean Lee, Emily Likins-Hohman, Sheri Massey, Abigail McDermott, Alexis Moses, Johnna Percell, Kaitlin Peterson, Ricky Punzalan, Brian Real, Sophie Reverdy, Lindsay Sarin, Molly Schwartz, Katie Shilton, Beth St. Jean, Amanda Waugh, Ann Weeks, Kim White, and Erin Zerhusen.

We are equally grateful to our families, the assorted spouses, significant whatevers, children, parents, siblings, and pets who were supportive of our writings endeavors for the book. A special thank you goes out to Carol Jaegerthe wonderful mother of one of the authorsfor reading and providing feedback on the book manuscript.

Most significantly, we are grateful to the readers of this book for spending time with our ideas.

Figure 2.1: Languages on the World Wide Web in 2013

Table 2.1: Mass media distribution from 1920 to 1970

Table 2.2: Educational attainment from 1900 to 1970

Table 2.3: Literacy rates from 1900 to 1979

Table 2.4: Real gross domestic product per capita in 1960 (in 2011 US$)

Table 6.1: Case-study country comparison chart