----> things are looking up for young Latino users

Hello everyone. I am busy analyzing data. I think I found something significant.

We are showing a very strong Latino/a presence in pre-teens.

Of adult users, approximately 39% were Latino/a.

Of teen users, approximately 58% were Latino/a.

Of pre-teen users, approximately 72% were Latino/a.

(In all of these cases, Latino use was predominantly male--59%-60%. This gender distribution is our exact average for the entire sample, all races and ages.)

research questions

Hi everyone!
I sent out my revision to Dean and Joe yesterday, and I look forward to adding two charts that provide a good illustration to what we're seeing.
In revising, two questions emerged as the most pressing (to me) as we think about the digital divide in the future...

1) How are people who use public access finding out about new sites and finding out how to do new things on the internet? This would help us understand how libraries can support building not just digital access but also building understanding of what can be done on the internet to increase one's quality of life. Some observations seemed to indicate that working in groups on one PC encouraged the exchange of information, but there must be more to it than that.

2) Why, in both 1999 and 2009, did our data show that approximately 60% of users are men and 40% are women? Are there long term effects to this "divide within a divide?"

Bye for now everyone!
Laura

Adding a graph about New(er) non-profits

Hi Laura and Joe,
I'm adding a paragraph about a few of the non-profits that have emerged specifically in response to technology issues. Latinitas and Girlstart are two dealing specifically with girls. If anyone knows of others that should be included, pls. let me know.

Article about Digital offerings in New England Public Libraries

This article didn't have anything I needed for these specific updates, but it could be handy if we'd like to compare Austin with some other parts of the country.

The Impact of Digital Resource and Service Use on Urban Residents in New England Public Libraries—A Survey Report
Public Library Quarterly, Volume 28, Issue 1 January 2009 , pages 4 - 23

Abstract
Today, access to digital information is essential to patrons using public libraries, whether they have contact with computers at home, work or school or whether the public library is their only contact. In order to evaluate and ultimately enhance public library digital resources and services, it is critical for administrators, librarians and digital information architects to recognize the impact their current digital offerings have on users. This study utilizes a survey to gauge the perceptions of patrons who use digital resources and services in six urban New England public libraries as part of ongoing research into digital information access in public libraries in the United States from the perspective of user


http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a908976990~db=all~jumptype=rss

Latino identities and media use

This blog intends to complement a research project ongoing at the University of Texas' Radio-TV-Film Department about how access to and use of media, information and culture by ethnic majorities, minorities and immigrants has evolved in Austin. Please feel free to comment.

We have interviewed quite a few people from 1999 to present in Austin and will be interviewing more in fall of 2009, focusing on comparing different immigrant groups' life histories with migration, social mobility, and the use of both traditional and new media. We are already analyzing a number of the existing interviews and hope to be testing ideas out here and publishing them in various places.

One of the grad students working on the project found that a previous study by Rios and Gaines (1998) showed that Mexican immigrants also fall into the classification later suggested by Berry et al (2006), and that based on circumstances specific to the family or the group, the outcome of the acculturation process could be either primarily ethnic, primarily national, or bicultural.

My own expectation is that we will see more and more people having identities and media use that could either be described as blended/hybrid or multi-layered, like the idea of bicultural, but increasingly more complicated. People are not only just Latino, blended or acculturated, they are also young (or not), male or female, richer or poorer, more or less educated. All those layers of identity interact, I think. Stay tuned. Let's see what we find as we dig deeper. (note by Joe Straubhaar)