Methods
At the June 2000 CTCNet conference in Atlanta, we asked participants what improvements in information exchange could help their centers operate most effectively. What follows are the findings from three focus groups comprised of twenty-four CTC staff members and supporters. We asked several open-ended questions about their information-seeking behavior. Some of the questions that guided this preliminary investigation include:
- What kind of information is sought?
- How or where is information obtained?
- What barriers are encountered in seeking information?
- What would make the search for information easier?
- How would community technology center staff and supporters like to share information?
In an effort to answer these questions, each of the participants volunteered an hour and a half of their time at the conference to participate in a focus group. The participants reflected the diversity of the conference itself, in age, experience, ethnicity, and geographic diversity. Furthermore, the participants represented the range of community technology center staff and supporters. In addition to individuals who operate centers, we heard from CTC executive directors, librarians, entrepreneurs, policy researchers, city government officials, and CTC funders. All of the participants shared a genuine eagerness to improve the information exchange within and among community technology centers.
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What Information Do Community Technology Staff Look For?
A major finding of this study is that information is only as valuable as the person or organization that provides it. One focus group participant captured this idea well by saying: "There is just nothing that the Internet can do that communicates more information than the tone of voice of the person you are talking with." Participants in our focus groups resoundingly told us that they trust the people behind information, not just information alone. For this reason, community technology staff tend to use information resources that they trust. This can mean a friend or colleague recommended the source, the staff person had positive past experiences with the source, or a trusted institution backs up the information.
In exploring the question of what kinds of information community technology staff look for, we found that the answer is not limited to types of information, but, rather, is informed by the characteristics of the information itself. Community technology staff look for information that they can trust, information that is current, reliable, and comprehensive, and information sources that emphasize content over aesthetics. The types of information they look for can be divided into a few main categories: information on financial opportunities, local information, best practices and lessons learned, and evaluated sources.
Information Characteristics
Trusted information
Generally, the first characteristic of information that community technology staff look for is trustworthiness. Trusted information means different things to different people. A common understanding, however, is that trusted information is either generated by a known source, or reviewed by a respected individual or organization. Some community technology staff find that the community technology information they trust comes from the people "who are out there on the front lines doing the work every day" in community technology centers. Information that comes from a trustworthy or even recognizable source is much more likely to be valued than that from an unknown author. One focus group participant commented that: "Not only do you know the source and trust it because this person had a good track record, but you are dealing with someone whose ulterior motive you don't have to question."
Finding trusted information on the World Wide Web can often be a huge challenge for community technology staff. Focus group participants agreed that "authorship gives some credibility to what a person is saying," yet many felt that authorship, on its own, may not be enough. "If you send me an email and I don't know who you are, you could have the best information in the world, but I'll never believe it or open it up to look at it," noted one CTC staff member. Because of the volume of emails community technology staff receive, they often make choices about which messages they will read and which they will ignore or delete. Frequently this choice depends on whether they know the sender and if they can trust the sender to have reliable information.
Expertise is another dimension of trusted information. Expert information is often correlated with an informed source or information that has been produced by someone who is knowledgeable in a particular area. Focus group participants agreed on this issue: "If you are looking for a particular specialty, you will get a better sense for it by going to a person who specializes in that area." "So, if you are from a particular school or if you are from a particular organization, you are the authority in that particular area and that question is posed to you and you take that information to be at least credible."
Current information
While trusted information is that which comes from a trusted source, reliable information refers to the currency and accuracy of the information. Having access to current information can be vital to the daily running of community technology organizations. For example, focus group participants seeking grants said the information that they found on one major funder's web site had been useless to them because it was information about the previous year's grant, not current funding opportunities.
Comprehensive information
Comprehensiveness is a third characteristic of information sought. Comprehensive information sources provide significant detailed information in a context in which the user can make an informed decision. Community technology staff want to know that the information they find is the most authoritative or best available information. Furthermore, they desire enough information to give them a clear picture of what may be missing or where they may need to keep looking.
Often when community technology staff find information, what they discover only partially meets their information needs. Our focus group participants found that when they use the World Wide Web to search for information, they find that some web sites will provide limited information, but exclude important components, such as a regional telephone number of a contact person. Excluding these small, but important pieces of information results in an increased amount of effort for the information seeker. One participant described the extra effort required: "I've found that in searching for grants on the Internet, there's information about the foundation itself, but often not information about grants and grant deadlines and who to contact. Then you have to call a 1-800 number or a long distance number and go around and around trying to find out where you get the grant guidelines and what are the actual deadline dates, and those types of things. Finding out how to get to that information takes a while."
Emphasis on content over aesthetics
Finally, community technology staff prefer useful information to "bells and whistles." Focus group participants repeatedly stated that they do not want web pages where the design is emphasized over the content. When looking for information on the Internet, many found that most of it was "just very glossy, very advertising-driven, and not what I was looking for." Another typical remark was: "I found two different sites for my information but they had nothing but flash. They were beautiful but of absolutely no value and did not help me at all."
Categories of Information
We found that there are no standard information needs of community technology staff and supporters. In fact, their information needs cover a wide range of categories, from seeking funding information to looking for local community technology events. But just as several common themes have emerged as characteristics of information sought, community technology staff also typically seek a few common types of information. These can be organized into a few main categories: financial opportunities, local information, best practices and lessons learned, and evaluated sources.
Financial opportunities
Funding information is one of the most eagerly sought types of information by community technology staff. Information about grants is especially in demand. Community technology staff seek information at all points in the application process, including identifying grants, application criteria, grant-writing assistance, and award guidelines. They also frequently look for such basic information as deadlines and contact information for the grant administrators.
For other types of financial opportunities, community technology staff seek statistical and demographic information. Other types of business related information they look for include general research on running a business, information on Internet start-up businesses, buying patterns, and information to aid business development plans.
Local information
There is a high demand for information that is specific to a region. Community technology staff are interested in programs and events that are going on in their area. Local conferences and networking opportunities were of particular interest for the community technology staff in our focus groups. One participant commented that the most useful information he could find related to his work involved activities occurring in his city. When he searched for this information on the web by using the city name as a keyword, however, he found that his search results were not limited to the geographic region at all. Based on this and other similar experiences, he concluded that it would be helpful if he could conduct searches that limited the results, for example to only those events taking place in his city of residence.
The characteristic of local information is especially important when community technology staff look for information generated by and about other community technology staff. This information can meet the current needs of CTC staff, such as finding available employees, locating volunteers with specific skills, or identifying local conferences to attend. Focus group participants also noted the importance of asset maps in locating resources.
Best practices and lessons learned
Because community technology staff trust information that comes from a known source and rely on people as an important information resource, they are eager to learn how other community technology staff carry out their activities, which information sources they use, and what lessons they have learned.
Community technology staff frequently look for information that tells them how to do something. This information ranges from the general (how to use information, troubleshooting techniques for technology, tips and ideas for teaching) to the specific (how to run a software program, how to dispose of computers in a certain geographic area, how to run a government-funded program). They would like access to materials that other community technology staff have used successfully. However, they frequently encounter difficulty operating their centers due to a lack of models. The desired information includes job descriptions for the community technology field and evaluation materials.
Community technology staff also look for operational documents, or "nuts and bolts" materials that can be easily modified to fit a particular community technology center. The documentation community technology staff would like to find include policies, templates of forms, charts of accounts, budget records, job descriptions, staff development materials, orientation manuals, network configurations, technology maps, and evaluation materials.
Community technology staff want to learn about the experiences of others in order to emulate what has been successful and to avoid what has not worked. For this reason, best practices and scenarios of what has worked, as well as what has not worked, are in high demand. One focus group participant remarked, "At conferences and meetings we tend to say what's going great because we want everyone to know we're doing well, but we forget to tell them what our mistakes are. And I think that's as important, especially if someone is starting up a new CTC or if they're developing a new curriculum."
Another reason for wanting to know what community technology staff in other centers are doing is to gather ideas and see if someone else has created a product that may be of use to another center. For example, CTCs may not have time to invest in developing a particular type of curriculum. They should not need to invest their own limited resources, however, if a model they can use already exists.
Community technology staff also seek information about their audience and the users of their products. Finding out what their users want and how community technology centers can better serve them results in products and services that can best provide what the clientele needs. Advice on how to compose and conduct user surveys is an example of information that would help community technology staff learn how to best serve their audience.
Evaluated sources
Finding information that has been evaluated by a trustworthy source is often the missing piece that leaves community technology staff feeling they have not obtained complete or useful information. For some staff, information is only useful if it has been approved or recommended by a trusted source. One participant stated it this way: "The thing that I am looking for that bothers me more than information when I can't find it is a certain kind of knowledge. If there was one place that was on top of and could offer a good summary of what all the resources were, I would find that enormously helpful." As this comment indicates, evaluated resources represent information that has been analyzed and organized by a reputable authority and disseminated for the benefit of a larger audience.
More than one focus group participant noted the strength of web sites like Amazon.com because of their use of customer reviews. In fact, several participants expressed a desire for more information resources based on a recommender model: "The sites I find most valuable are the places where there's some reputable review of a product, web site or information resource." A key ingredient in the effectiveness of these resources is a mechanism that allows users to write in their own comments and reviews. These reviews and synopses lend further credibility to information sources because community technology staff know who the reviewers are, and thus know which information comes from a source they trust.
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How Do Community Technology Staff Find Information?
Human Information Resources
Our focus group participants overwhelmingly agreed that other community technology staff members and supporters are their most valuable information resources. Some stated that even with the popularity and breadth of the web they still consider community technology staff to be their greatest resource. In fact, although the web is often where they end up gathering information, they tend to go there only to get supplemental information after first hearing about something from other people.
The limited degrees of separation between community technology staff create a special kind of knowledge that becomes a valuable information resource. Staff emphasize the importance of personal relationships when they search for information. "I think it's personal contacts a lot of times that help you the most," one of our focus group participants stated. Another participant commented that after checking a web site for contact information and not finding it, he found the information he needed by calling or emailing somebody he thought would know how to reach that person. This method proved more effective than conducting a search of the web.
Another advantage of community technology staff sharing information is that in talking with others, people get more than a one-dimensional approach to information. "I could sit on the Internet for hours, but while it's giving me information, it's not telling me what's good or bad or how to mold it or how to use it. My mentors have done that for me."
There are different ways that information seekers use community technology staff as information resources. On an individual level, CTC staff call up local, state, or national organizations (public, private, government, professional, and trade) to speak with an individual. Emailing and meeting with someone face-to-face to ask specific questions are other ways of using individuals as resources.
Information is often gleaned through casual interactions with individuals when information is not specifically sought. Community technology staff acquire their information from other people through personal relationships, formal and informal networking events, and word of mouth exchanges in meetings and phone calls. An advantage of gaining information this way is that the information source is known and trusted. The information received therefore increases in value.
World Wide Web
If people are the most valued information source, the Internet is the most frequently used resource. Community technology staff often use search engines as a starting point for their searches. Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com) and other search engines designed as Internet directories are popular, as are meta search engines, sites that help users pick an appropriate search engine to use or employ several search engines simultaneously to conduct searches.
The second way that community technology staff find information on the web is to head directly to a specific web site for information. These web sites are often the home pages of organizations or web portals, web sites set up as a doorway to the World Wide Web. Hyperlinks to other web sites provide another way of finding information.
To keep track of their favorite sites, community technology staff save the URLs in their browser by creating bookmarks. Community technology staff also use subscription index services, such as Lexis-Nexis, and other types of paid access services, such as the business service Forester. Staff find subscription services immensely helpful because they have an indexing service superior to the web or because they contain information that is updated daily or even hourly.
Email
Email is a very commonly used way to gather information. Many community technology staff members belong to listservs or discussion groups. By posting questions and following the responses, staff can find answers to their questions or come across new information by reading the daily posts. The more a listserv is tailored to a specific area of interest, the more it is found helpful. Community technology staff also subscribe to news lists and electronic newsletters.
Email is often used to replace other forms of communicating with individuals. One person remarked that "I don't make phone calls but I email all day long." Another person echoed that statement: "If people call me, chances are I'm not able to return the call right away. I end up telling people, why don't you just email me, give me your web site and tell me what you're all about, and I'll give you a call back."
Email is also used as a convenient way to receive web site addresses and documents. Emails with web links or attachments provide additional information besides what is in the body of the email and is an easy way to access that information.
Print Resources
Print resources are still considered valued information sources. Newspapers, professional journals, and newsletters are major sources to which community technology staff frequently refer. Specific sources that they find helpful are phone books, Consumer Reports and other buying guides, and topical books, such as Digital Divide: Computers and our Children's Future (authors, David B. Bolt, Ray A.K. Crawford; 2000). Focus group participants remarked that they use resource guides in reports and bibliographies from books. Participant lists from conferences and mailings represent other valued print resources.
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Overcoming Barriers To Gathering Information
With every method of finding information and every information source consulted, community technology staff encounter barriers. Focus group participants told us what obstacles they encountered in their search for information and what they thought would make their information search easier.
Finding People
Because community technology staff consider people to be their best resource, the problem of finding the right information translates into a problem of finding the right person. Knowing which person might know the answer to a question or who has expertise in a certain area goes a long way toward helping community technology staff and supporters to find information.
But a large barrier in the way of finding information through other people is the lack of mechanisms in place that allow community technology staff to share information easily and to learn what others are doing. One successful mechanism that exists is the exchange of information through formal and informal networking events. Focus group participants commented that networking events and local conferences helped them to connect with community technology staff and useful information.
Sharing Information
One way for community technology staff to find new information is to share what they know with other CTCs. The information that community technology staff most want others to share is their best practices and lessons learned. They desire this information because it comes from other people, their most valued information source. Knowing about successful and unsuccessful endeavors will make the job easier for community technology staff. Being able to download and use documentation without having to create it from scratch saves time for staff members and provides them with ideas of how other staff are creating resources.
There are several barriers in the way of sharing information. One large barrier is the amount of time required of community technology staff to share what they know with others.
Focus group participants also commented that a potential drawback to sharing information is having others use their work without acknowledging the time they invested. For example, community technology staff who spend many staff hours and financial resources to create curriculum want to receive credit and respect for their labor. The risk is that there may be people who will use someone else's product without giving credit to the source or being appreciative of another person's efforts.
For-profit businesses may encounter another barrier when sharing their information. Giving away their trade secrets could harm them competitively by reducing their business profits.
The entire CTC community benefits, however, from sharing information with each other. Community technology staff more often know the originators of shared information that comes from other community technology staff than information that comes from miscellaneous sources. In knowing the source, staff know whether they can trust the information and how reliable it is.
Sharing allows community technology staff to build on top of others' successful work for a favorable outcome instead of having to do all the work themselves. Other benefits accrued from sharing information are that it puts institutions in a good light with funders, who can be assured that their money is not being spent on reinventing the wheel, and sharing promotes individual centers by associating their name with a quality product
The notion that information becomes more valuable when you share it and less valuable if you are the only one who has it is an altruistic motive for some community technology staff to share information. The benefit comes in being able to give back to help others.
For-profit businesses can also benefit by sharing their information in that it helps them to advertise their business. In addition, new companies can legitimize their activities and gain supporters by sharing what they are doing.
Searching the Web
While the World Wide Web has the power to overcome the limits of geography and possesses the potential to provide a plethora of diverse information, it also represents a huge barrier to finding information.
Information overload is often the first barrier encountered when community technology staff log onto the World Wide Web and face the cumbersome task of searching for the information they need. There is simply too much information on the web to enable easy or thorough sorting. Focus group participants remarked that they needed more guidance from other people, particularly community technology staff, to know where the best sources of community technology information are on the web.
Many focus group participants agreed that their web searches are often unproductive because of inadequate search engines. They stated that using search engines as a mechanism for searching is an "awkward and time consuming" process that often leaves them feeling frustrated. They also felt that many search engines are too "academic" and not user friendly.
One reason that community technology staff are daunted by search engines is because they must use the right combination of keywords and spellings to get relevant results. They would like assistance in choosing which keywords to use rather than having to rely on guesswork or trial and error. This difficulty is compounded by the lack of a standard community technology vocabulary. Even the phrase community technology centers is not ubiquitous; some people in the community technology movement use the expressions telecenters or community access centers.
Community technology staff are also frustrated by the inability to limit or refine their search criteria. Focus group participants remarked that a helpful search engine would allow them to choose which information sources they wanted to search on the web. For example, they want to be able to limit their search to online periodicals or all dot-org web sites. Once they receive results, they would also like the ability to refine their search by using narrower search terms.
The time it takes to execute a web search is a large barrier encountered by all community technology staff. The speed of receiving information depends on the bandwidth of their network, the sophistication of their hardware, and the wiring capacities of their building site. Often, these are barriers that CTC staff cannot directly overcome. There are ways, however, to decrease the time necessary for a web search. For example, web sites that are designed for efficient information seeking decrease the amount of time it takes to find information on a site. One focus group participant stated that "The sites I use the most are those that are really easy to navigate, where they're well structured, they have site indexes, and where the information is up to date." In addition, focus group participants overwhelmingly agreed that they prefer low-bandwidth web sites that load quickly, unlike web sites that employ a lot of graphics and high-end applications that cause delays in page loading.
Once community technology staff execute a search, they encounter more barriers when they sort through their results to glean useful information. Because a page of search results usually only has information on the location of each site, community technology staff cannot easily tell if a site contains enough useful information to justify the time required to open and view its contents. Focus group participants remarked that web searching would be easier if search results gave clues as to the content contained within each web site so they would know what kind of information they could expect to find in a particular source before they access it.
Incomplete information on web sites is another barrier. Community technology staff may get some useful information from a web site, but not all the information that they need, forcing them to begin a new search. Focus group participants spoke of the frustration they encountered in searching for a grant deadline. They were able to find the appropriate web site, but discovered that the information on the grant deadline was nowhere on the site.
Over-reliance on the web as an information resource can be a barrier. Community technology staff who use the World Wide Web as their only information source when pursuing an information need find that the image of the Internet as being a comprehensive resource is a myth. Often, they find that the information they need is not on the web but is contained in other resources. Focus group participants stressed the need for having some way of knowing what information they can expect to find on the web and where to find it. They also need to know what information is not on the web so they know when to look in other information resources.
Organizing Information
How information is organized determines the ease and speed with which community technology staff can find information within a particular source. A better mapping of resources by locality and subject would help community technology staff find local information. Community technology staff look for local information so organizing information by geographic areas can help people locate regional networking events.
Organizing sources according to particular topics of interest is another searching aid. For instance, a broad list of email discussion groups is a more effective information source if the groups are organized into subcategories directed toward specific audiences. Central repositories of information, such as web sites with lists of URLs arranged by topic, are a convenient way to organize a large amount of information in one source. They also make it easier for community technology staff to compare and evaluate sources. "We need someone to say 'This is where all curriculum is' or where all the information on grants is, so that they can find all the information together, get an overview of it all, to make it easier to evaluate it."
Other Barriers
Blocked access
Access problems arise in the proliferation of different document formats. Not all community technology staff have the technological capability to open all different kinds of document formats. For example, if email applications are sent as HTML documents or PDF files and the receiver does not have the technological capability to open the document, the information inside is lost.
To address this problem, focus group participants suggested that information should always be distributed in a variety of formats. When information is on a web site, the format type should be clearly indicated. One focus group participant suggested having a different icon to represent the different formats. "You have to let people know if they can get the information, so they should easily be able to see what format it's in and be able to order it at the same time."
Delivery mechanisms
The method by which community technology staff send and receive information affects their use of the information. Choosing the right method of sending information can make it easier for them to find the information they want when they need it. Focus group participants agreed that the most convenient way for them to receive information is through emails. The reason for this is that email is a push application. A push application is one in which the sender has control over the timing and the content, and can thus push a message at another user. Telephone calls and email messages are examples of push applications. Applications that allow the receiver to have control over the timing and content of a message are pull applications. A web site is a pull application because a user must consciously go to the site to pull out a message.
Personal emails and listserv postings, particularly those with hyperlinks and attachments, are effective ways for community technology staff to receive information because it is sent directly to them, and they do not have to initiate the information search.
Language barriers
Finding information on the Internet in a language other than English is difficult when few non-English language web sites exist. Focus groups participants who work in multi-cultural neighborhoods cited the difficulty in finding information such as lesson plans, activities or handouts in a non-English language: "The information isn't even there to find. It just needs to be created." Making information easier to find in this instance means either creating it and making it accessible or designing adequate translation software.
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Recommendations
1. Identify Expertise.
It is important to identify who in the community technology movement possesses particular skills or expertise and to make this knowledge publicly visible.
Identifying individuals with special skills or expertise goes a long way toward helping community technology staff and supporters find information. In general, community technology staff want more access to their colleagues' views on information resources.
Because community technology staff consider other staffers their most valuable information resource, identification of individuals' expertise would make it easier to find trusted information.
2. Facilitate CTC Mentoring.
We recommend a virtual mentoring program that matches veteran CTC staff with newcomers. It would support the efforts of new CTC staff while invigorating senior staff with renewed energy for their work. Barriers, such as obtaining local information from a national source, could be alleviated by pairing senior CTC staff with newcomers to the field.
3. Provide A Community Technology Reference Librarian.
The community technology movement needs a virtual reference librarian. A librarian who is knowledgeable about the community technology movement, its participants, and available resources could point people to the information resources and people who would be most helpful for meeting their information need. The librarian would respond to inquiries using email, telephone calls or web forms.
4. Organize More Networking Opportunities.
More regional meetings would create more opportunities for face-to-face networking. To provide a helpful resource, community technology staff need to know what information other staffers and supporters need. In general, the best way to learn about other community technology staff needs is to stay connected with other members of the CTC movement. By maintaining connections with people, CTC staff create information channels for sharing information.
5. Document CTC Practices.
Since most of the benefit of documenting the practices of a CTC accrue to other such centers, CTCs are unlikely to prioritize documentation of their own practices. We believe that outside assistance should be provided in documenting practices to better inform the public.
One disadvantage in the short run is the time required for community technology staff to document what they know. Focus group participants spoke of wanting to record information, but because of a lack of time, having to choose between documenting information and accomplishing other work. In the end, however, sharing information can save CTC staff time at their jobs. They can avoid reinventing products or duplicating efforts by knowing what others have created that they can have access to. They can also learn valuable lessons that can prevent them from repeating mistakes others have made.
Laurel Sandor and Karen Scheuerer are Masters students at The University of Michigan School of Information. They prepared this report under the direction of Joan Durrance and Paul Resnick.
The authors welcome feedback on this article at si.cn@umich.edu.
Originated: November 6, 2000 | Maintained:
si.cn@umich.edu
URL: http://www.si.umich.edu/Community/connections
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