Seeking Truth From Facts 从事实中探求真理 Studies in Community Informatics 社群信息学研究 Edited by Kate WILLIAMS 凯特·威廉姆斯 Abdul ALKALIMAT 阿布杜·阿克利马 HAN Shenglong 韩圣龙 YAN Hui 闫慧 Community Informatics Summer School 2011 Sponsored by the Graduate School and organized by the Department of Information Management Peking University 2011 年度社群信息学暑期学校 北京大学研究生院主办 北京大学信息管理系承办 2 Table of Contents Group Photo ................................................................................................................... 4 Organizer‘s Preface ......................................................................................................... 5 Guest Lecturer‘s Preface ................................................................................................. 9 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 11 I. Public Libraries ......................................................................................................... 15 1. Factors Influencing Cyberpower in An-zhen Community Library ......................... 17 2. A Survey of the Interaction between the Public Computing Center and its Patrons: The Electronic Reading Room in the Da-xing District Public Library ....................... 57 3. A Case Study of the Civilian Mobile Library....................................................... 117 II. Commercial Sites ................................................................................................... 137 4. What Roles Does Starbucks Coffee Play as a Public Computing Site in China?... 139 5. A Business Analysis of Dangze Cybercafé and the Online Behavior of its Netizens ............................................................................................................................... 179 III. National Libraries ................................................................................................. 193 6. Information Commons for the Common in the Information Age: The National Library of China ..................................................................................................... 195 7. A Case Study of the National Science Library ..................................................... 223 IV. University Libraries .............................................................................................. 239 8. A Case Study of the China Agricultural University Library ................................. 241 9. The Capacity and Policy of the Peking University Library as a Public Computing Site ......................................................................................................................... 265 Appendix A. Letter of approval ................................................................................... 297 Appendix B. Syllabus and assignments ....................................................................... 299 Appendix C. Course website ....................................................................................... 315 Appendix D. FAQ in four parts and two languages ..................................................... 317 Appendix E. Summer school snapshots ....................................................................... 327 Note: Some chapter appendices are reproduced in this book. All are on the DVD distributed to all summer school students and faculty. Please contact them for more information. 3 Group Photo 4 Additional participants not pictured: WANG Sufang 王素芳, LI Ping 李萍 5 6 Organizer’s Preface HAN Shenglong 韩圣龙 Associate Professor, Peking University, [email protected] I was introduced to Kate Williams at the Community Informatics research Lab by Hui Yan in fall 2008. I was then a visiting scholar at UIUC, sponsored by the Freeman Foundation. That was my first date with community informatics (CI). In November 2010, Kate and her husband, Abdul Alkalimat, led their CI team to Beijing to attend COINFO‘10 and an information science forum held by the Department of Information Management at Peking University (PKU). I took part in both events, so I had the opportunity to communicate with the CI researchers from the US and learn more about CI. CI was a new field in China. There was very little related research other than what Dr. Yan had done in his PhD dissertation, and CI did not exist in any curricula in any universities by then. The idea of holding a CI summer school came to my mind. During their stay in Beijing, I brought up this idea to Kate and Abdul and invited them to come again and teach during the next summer. I was so glad that they took the invitation without any hesitation. Then, all that left for me to do was to find enough money for this. This idea was strongly supported by the executive group of the department of information management. I started writing proposals in December 2010. There were several directions at first, but none of them turned out to be feasible. On January 6, 2011, Professor Zhou, the associate dean of our department, mailed me about a project of the Ministry of Education, concerning the innovative education of graduate students. He suggested that I try this project. I submitted the application form immediately, and then came spring festival and winter break in China. After months of waiting, on April 19 I got the approval notification from the graduate school. My email flew to UIUC at once to tell Kate and Abdul the good news! I set up a website for the CI Summer School and put an ad out on the internet in no time. May and June are graduation season for China‘s universities, so I was a little afraid that there might not be enough students. Actually, I worried too much. We got 39 students‘ applications by the deadline, which was June 10. Thirty-five students registered on July 3, and 2 more registered later, so we finally recruited 37 students, who came from 18 institutions all over China. After all the efforts we made together, the summer school successfully concluded on July 27. This volume is the outcome of the students‘ excellent field studies, and also a good reference and demonstration for community informatics in China. BTW, since the fund from the Ministry of Education is limited, the 2011 CI summer school at Peking University is fully funded by the graduate school of Peking University. Han Shenglong August 1, 2011 @Changchunyuan, PKU 7 8 Guest Lecturer’s Preface YAN Hui 闫慧 Assistant Professor, Nankai University, [email protected] What you‘re going to read here is the very first collection of students‘ research projects about community informatics phenomena in Mainland China, from the 2011 Community Informatics Summer School at Peking University (CISS@PKU). CISS@PKU is supported by the Ministry of Education and the PKU Graduate School, led and operated by Professor Han Shenglong, one of the associate professors in the PKU Department of Information Management, and taught by Professor Abdul Alkalimat, Kate Williams and me. It‘s my great pleasure to serve as pipeline for collaborations in community informatics research, teaching, and practice between P. R. China and the United States. In November 2006, during his Information Services course, after my presentation of research on community information services, Professor Chen Jianlong suggested that I read more materials on community informatics research abroad. That‘s the first time I learned that community informatics is an emerging field, closely related to my interests. When China Scholarship Council (CSC) under the Ministry of Education announced its funding plan for scholars to visit world-class universities and fields at the end of 2007, I got touch with Abdul and then Kate via the GSLIS website and email without any hesitation. Although I had no acquaintance with CI in other countries, and didn‘t know that there were some scholars at UIUC interested in China for a long time, Kate invited me to become a visiting student in their Community Informatics Research Lab only a couple of hours after my inquiry email. My friends and colleagues always say that this was a miracle among applications for studying opportunities overseas, I never crossed any two of my fingers before that surprising invitation. With the joint supervision of Prof Kate Williams, Abdul Alkalimat and Lai Maosheng, I finished my doctoral dissertation on digital inequality in Chinese communities, which is regarded as the very first community informatics research in Mainland China and the first achievement from the collaboration between PKU and UIUC on CI. Fortunately, more actions on CI collaboration were taken after a few months. I organized the CI Lab @ UIUC‘s first (although not perfect) China trip in November 2010, my course about Internet and Community Informatics was first offered during the academic year 2010-2011 at Nankai University, and finally the main event: 2011CISS@PKU was totally successful this summer. We‘re hitting the road. Better late than never. Marked by 2011CISS@PKU, community informatics begins to take root in the Chinese context. Thirty-seven more seeds are being planted here and furthermore the nine public computing sites field study reports are absolutely the first fruits. Please taste and spread. Truly I hope community informatics can make a great difference toward a harmonious and equal information society in China. 9 10 Introduction Abdul ALKALIMAT 阿布杜·阿克利马 Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, [email protected] Kate WILLIAMS 凯特·威廉姆斯 Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, [email protected] Introduction We introduce