Digital Public Spaces Trend-spotting Report: Detailed Trends Submitted by: Alexandra Carruthers For: Pam Ryan Date: November 7, 2013 Page | 2 Executive Summary The Detailed Trends report, along with the Vision and Recommendations report, are the product of the first project of the Digital Public Spaces Internship, beginning May 2013. EPL’s Strategic Plan for 2014-2018 establishes the strategic goal to “create a digital environment that fuels Edmontonians’ experimentation, discovery and wonder” and to “delight and engage our customers with incredible content, and rich, collaboratively-created and nurtured digital public spaces.” While the Vision and Recommendations report outlines potential service directions towards achieving this goal, this report provides the information that supports those service directions. A total of 12 trends were identified and are discussed in this report. The investigation included the review of 80 public library websites, 23 interviews with library staff involved in the development of digital projects, and a review of innovative digital projects in a broad range of cultural institutions. Information was gathered about the successes, challenges and technical and administrative infrastructure that made up their efforts to create digital public spaces. In many cases, the available information about these digital projects is limited by the fact that they were developed outside the structure of evidence-based practice; as a result, most of the information in this report is qualitative and anecdotal. A total of 61 projects are reviewed in this report. Page | 3 Table of Contents Executive Summary ................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 4 Definitions .................................................................................................................................. 5 Methodology .............................................................................................................................. 6 Library Website Review .......................................................................................................... 6 Interviews ............................................................................................................................... 6 Digital Trend Review .............................................................................................................. 8 Findings ..................................................................................................................................... 9 1. Makerspaces and Digital Media Labs .............................................................................. 9 2. Community-Built Digital Collections ................................................................................20 3. Livestreaming Events .....................................................................................................32 4. Online Book Discussions ................................................................................................36 5. Kids Spaces ...................................................................................................................42 6. Teen Spaces ..................................................................................................................47 7. Local History Apps .........................................................................................................50 8. Hacker Events and Open Data .......................................................................................56 9. Community Information Sites ..........................................................................................62 10. Digital Community Consultation ..................................................................................67 11. Unique Ideas ...............................................................................................................72 12. Organizational Structure .............................................................................................77 References ...............................................................................................................................83 Appendix A – Library Websites Reviewed .................................................................................87 Appendix B – Broad Trends in Library Web Presences .............................................................88 Appendix C – Interview Template..............................................................................................89 Appendix D – Libraries Contacted .............................................................................................91 Appendix E – Open Source Technology....................................................................................93 Appendix F – Types of Online Participation ...............................................................................95 Appendix G – Preliminary List of Public Domain Content ..........................................................96 Page | 4 Introduction To work towards defining solid directions for EPL’s 2014-2018 Strategic Goal to “evolve our digital environment,” the Digital Public Spaces Intern investigated trends in the development of digital public spaces. The investigation included the review of 80 public library websites, 23 interviews with library staff involved in the development of digital projects, and a review of innovative digital projects in a broad range of cultural institutions. A total of 12 trends were identified and are discussed in this report. Detailed case studies and examples of these trends are presented along with analyses of their applicability to EPL’s stated goals. Each section of this report elaborates upon corresponding sections in the Vision and Recommendations report. At the beginning of each section, the Investigation Summary introduces the trend and the specific research conducted on the topic; the Project Descriptions include case studies and summaries of projects that constitute the trend; and the Conclusions synthesize the results and justify the vision and recommendations. Page | 5 Definitions Digital Public Space – This concept is being actively explored and promoted by the BBC and experimental public/private research and development institute The Creative Exchange. The idea emerges out of a vision of a wholly compatible web through which “anyone, anywhere, anytime can access, explore and create with digital content” (The Creative Exchange). Building on this definition, EPL’s digital public space fuels Edmontonians’ creative experimentation, discovery and wonder by developing a collaboratively built and continually growing online environment, Image retrieved from http://thecreative which provides open access to multimedia resources exchange.org/activity/reading-digital- and a content-creation platform. public-space Crowdsourcing – “an online, distributed problem-solving and production model that leverages the collective intelligence of online communities to serve specific organizational goals” (Brabham, 2013, p. xix). Gamification – “the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service” (Oxford Dictionary, n.d.). API – Acronym that stands for Application Programming Interface. According to Webopedia, an API “is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications.” The most important things to know about APIs is that they are a tool that allows applications to talk to each other and that they “are ubiquitous and essential to the modern cloud-based technology landscape” (Cassano, 2013). Hyperlocal – A term initially coming out of journalism (see Shaw, 2007) that “connotes information oriented around a well-defined community with its primary focus directed toward the concerns of its residents” (Wikipedia). Page | 6 Methodology Research into digital trends in librarianship and advances in digital public spaces more generally was performed in three stages: 1) A review of urban library system websites; 2) A series of interviews with librarians responsible for innovative projects; and 3) A literature review surveying digital projects run by cultural institutions other than libraries. Library Website Review Research included an online review of urban library services in the United States and Canada. Libraries in US cities with populations larger than 300,000 and Canadian cities larger than 285, 000 were investigated, as were libraries identified by the Urban Libraries Council as top innovators and libraries recommended by interviewees. A total of 81 library websites were reviewed. There were 11 Canadian libraries, 70 American libraries, with 8 of the American libraries falling under the population limit. The primary goal of this review was to identify libraries that had developed unique digital public spaces in order to study these projects in more detail. Each library website was reviewed for examples of digital projects, collaborative projects, online programming, digital media labs, open data projects and anything that could be described as a digital public space; strategic plans were also consulted for examples of future plans. See Appendix A for list of library