What kinds of things do users do with AM? In a public library there are
two main goals or ways that AM is being used: as an individual learning
tool, and as a leisure activity. Adult learning was one area that VECCIA
would highlight as a possible application for a tool such as AM. She
described a patron of a rural public library who comes in every day on
his lunch hour and literally reads AM, methodically going through the
collection image by image. At the end of his hour he makes an electronic
bookmark, puts it in his pocket, and returns to work. The next day he
comes in and resumes where he left off. Interestingly, this man had
never been in the library before he used AM. In another small, rural
library, the coordinator reports that AM is a popular activity for some
of the older, retired people in the community, who ordinarily would not
use "those things,"--computers. Another example of adult learning in
public libraries is book groups, one of which, in particular, is using AM
as part of its reading on industrialization, integration, and urbanization
in the early 1900s.
One library reports that a family is using AM to help educate their
children. In another instance, individuals from a local museum came in
to use AM to prepare an exhibit on toys of the past. These two examples
emphasize the mission of the public library as a cultural institution,
reaching out to people who do not have the same resources available to
those who live in a metropolitan area or have access to a major library.
One rural library reports that junior high school students in large
numbers came in one afternoon to use AM for entertainment. A number of
public libraries reported great interest among postcard collectors in the
Detroit collection, which was essentially a collection of images used on
postcards around the turn of the century. Train buffs are similarly
interested because that was a time of great interest in railroading.
People, it was found, relate to things that they know of firsthand. For
example, in both rural public libraries where AM was made available,
observers reported that the older people with personal remembrances of
the turn of the century were gravitating to the Detroit collection.
These examples served to underscore MICHELSON's observation re the
integration of electronic tools and ideas--that people learn best when
the material relates to something they know.
VECCIA made the final point that in many cases AM serves as a
public-relations tool for the public libraries that are testing it. In
one case, AM is being used as a vehicle to secure additional funding for
the library. In another case, AM has served as an inspiration to the
staff of a major local public library in the South to think about ways to
make its own collection of photographs more accessible to the public.
******
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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