Survey for Community Information Providers
As information professionals and students of the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, our mission is to provide universal access to books and other information resources. We believe that universal access must include Canada’s remote and rural First Nations communities.
This semester we have undertaken a project to explore an alternative way to provide First Nations libraries and readers with books and other reading materials. It’s an idea that uses the Internet, computers, and relatively low-cost printing and bookbinding methods to bring the world of online contents into the hands of readers. It’s called the On-Demand Book Service (ODBS).
The On-Demand Book Service (ODBS) would enable members of your community to choose from a list of online titles, then print and bind an actual book… all in one visit to the library (or another central space in your community)! We’ve already conducted a few classroom experiments and have tested the process in action. We are very excited about this ODBS project, and after learning about it, we hope you will be too.
Our vision is to have users download and print online contents using an all-in-one book printing system that plugs into your computer and the Internet. First, users would browse an ODBS web site (a portal) to search through digital book collections. These collections would include current standards such as the Internet Archive, and could even be expanded to include contents that users create themselves (such as, for example, newsletters, artwork, poems, recipes, or children's stories). Since it’s online, the ODBS web portal could be expanded to include other media such as video and audio files. Our goal is to make the ODBS as easy to use as possible.
We are currently studying how to make this vision practical, affordable, useful, and relevant to the needs of remote and rural First Nations. To create an actual book (or print other materials), the equipment needed would consist of a computer with an internet connection, a printer, a cutter/scorer machine, and supplies (paper, binding material, and cartridges). We want to design a system that meets the budgetary constraints and resource needs of small libraries, like those in remote and rural First Nations. But to do this well, and to understand all the challenges, we need your input.
We ask you, for the purpose of this survey, not to think about whether you have all the equipment available or not. Rather, the purpose of this survey is to gather information about potential partners who may be interested in this project, as well as to learn about your community’s library and its needs. This information will also help us assess what online books/content could be useful to you and your community. In other words, this survey is to help us understand better your work environment, the kinds of materials and contents that are needed by your users, and how we can partner with you on this and future ODBS projects.
We really value your input, so please take a moment to answer our questions. It will take you at most 15 minutes to complete the survey (you are not obligated to answer all questions, if you don't want to).
For more information about our project, we have a website for the ODBS on K-NET at www.odbs.knet.ca. Or you can email ondemandbookservice@gmail.com for more information. We thank you in advance for your time!