One of the points I tried to empha­size in my talk about libraries and civic engage­ment (PDF) at last month’s Allen County Pub­lic Library’s Library Camp is that this isn’t a new role for us. The easy, sound­bite way to explain this is to note that at the turn of the pre­vi­ous cen­tury, one of our major roles was to help immi­grants assim­i­late into Amer­i­can soci­ety and learn how to be U.S. cit­i­zens. At the turn of the cur­rent cen­tury, there’s a sim­i­lar need for us to do the same thing for dig­i­tal immi­grants, in no small part because there really isn’t any­one else to help those folks who are past high school age.

I’ve been grav­i­tat­ing towards this topic lately because I see so much poten­tial, for both libraries and soci­ety, and the fol­low­ing idea makes total sense to me.

From the 2020 Fore­cast: Cre­at­ing the Future of Learn­ing site, New Civic Lit­era­cies:

“David Nord­fors, who runs the inno­va­tion jour­nal­ism pro­gram at Stan­ford, stays stu­dens are mov­ing towards a jour­nal­isatic method of learn­ing — find­ing knowl­edge, ass­esing it, and then con­nect­ing the dots to build a story.”

Sadly, like the 2006 MacArthur report about par­tic­i­pa­tory cul­ture, the 2020 effort includes libraries in that future only as after­thoughts, no more than poten­tial sup­port resources, rather than cen­tral, dri­ving fig­ures. While I applaud efforts like MacArthur’s dig­i­tal learn­ing in edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tive and the 2020 Fore­cast, I remain con­vinced that as a soci­ety, we’ll have a much greater impact on civic life for a greater range of peo­ple by focus­ing on libraries as the pri­mary change agent, not schools.

We’re already well-positioned in our com­mu­ni­ties to be the con­ven­ers for this type of activ­ity, we have a library ecosys­tem for life­long learn­ing that includes adults (not just K-12 stu­dents), we have sup­port­ing resources (not just tech­nol­ogy, but con­text), we teach how to nav­i­gate infor­ma­tion, and we’re the last, safe, non-commercial space that’s open to any­one with­out any bar­ri­ers. In fact, quite a few sec­tions of the 2020 site scream “libraries” to me, and I encour­age you to read through the var­i­ous sections.

So while I’m intrigued by and fully sup­port the idea of schools encour­ag­ing “inno­va­tion jour­nal­ists,” those pro­grams won’t reach their full poten­tial — nor will the stu­dents — with­out libraries to sup­port them. And when those stu­dents get out into the real world, libraries can facil­i­tate their non-school efforts. And we can bring them together with the rest of the com­mu­nity to put those new civic lit­era­cies into prac­tice for everyone.

And don’t get me started on the par­tic­i­pa­tory divide.…