First, let me say that BeyondBooks was an informative and inspiring event. Not being involved in the library or journalism ”businesses” it was a steep learning curve. I have given thought to the possibilities raised many times since.

Recently a thought entered my mind and I decided to offer it here for a reality check.

Just a bit of background. I run a not-for-profit focused on educating New Yorkers on the use of the .nyc TLD – like .com and .org but just for New York. We view .nyc as digital infrastructure that offers potential for a wide variety of civic and economic development roles, if imagined as a public interest resource. Alternately it could just be a name-sales mechanism like the .com TLD, i.e., the more names sold the more revenue realized.

So what is going to happen is that sometime in 2013 the city’s Internet community (still requiring some definition) will have access to an entire set of domain names. And, if the public interest development is followed, names will be allocated to neighborhoods, e.g., GreenwichVillage.nyc, our small businesses, as portals (hotels.nyc, pizza.nyc), to civic organizations, for public spaces and objects – streets, bridges, transit stations, buildings, fire hydrants, light posts, and more.

One of the challenges is figuring out how to identify public interest names and distribute them equitably and with efficiency.

Further, how to make the .nyc TLD a sustainable resource. That is, how do we make sure there are good domain names for our children and theirs? (Some will say that domain names are old hat, that they will soon be replaced by something new – and indeed that might be true. But their replacement is not on the horizon and prudence demands that we create it with a thought for the future.)

So my thought was about a role for libraries in the distribution of domain names. For example, here in New York City, might libraries play a role in identifying local organizations and projects that will benefit from good domain names? (Good domain names are short, descriptive and memorable.) Can they identify and oversee the development of polices on the reuse of names of the save-our-tree.nyc sort?

Beyond the naming role, there is surely an extension of its traditional Internet access and training roles that relate to locating domain names and their websites. Also, governance of the TLD is still in question – perhaps there is a way to engage residents in civic conversations and processes guiding the many questions of appropriate names, or maybe that should be inappropriate ones.

More background. Global cities like New York will make use of TLDs beginning as early as 2013. The application filing fee for a city-TLD will be $185,000 in 2012. So few will be apply when the opportunity first arises to apply for a city-TLD in early 2012. (I would estimate 20 globally.) But as their utility are proven, and as the TLD application fees are lowered over the next decade, many cities might find TLDs useful.

Is there a role for libraries in domain name identification? Distribution? Training? Recycling?

Best,

Tom Lowenhaupt

———————————————– 
Thomas Lowenhaupt, Founder & Chair
Connecting.nyc Inc.

toml@communisphere.com
Jackson Hts., NYC 11372
718 639 4222

web – http://connectingnyc.org
wiki – http://bit.ly/OurWiki
blog – http://bit./y/OurBlog

Bill Densmore asked for 2-3 keys points we took away from BiblioNews. Here are mine: (Hope I’m posting these in the right place!)

1. Librarians and journalists have many common interests, values and experiences. But how do we get beyond the obvious beneficial results of collaborating? What more can we all gain than:
* Libraries provide information and facts for news stories.
* Libraries curate information (so best/most useful/most relevant stories rise to the top).
* Newsrooms tell stories of libraries and their roles in communities, which can lead to increased funding and library use).
* Newsrooms provide reading material for libraries.

Our challenge is to come up with new ways to collaborate, and to perhaps to focus on how we, together, can provide information that helps people make informed decisions for themselves, their families, their community, this country, and our world.

2. Is it my responsibility to get everyone involved in the news process? I’ve always thought it was. Public Insight journalism is built on the belief that everyone has knowledge that the rest of us can learn from. So the more people who are talking to journalists, and the more diverse those people’s backgrounds are, the better we can report on what’s going on around us.

A big part of my job has been to make sure we’re hearing from people whose perspectives, stories and voices are not often in the news, or people whom we talk about on the news (e.g., people who are homeless) way more than we talk with.

But at BiblioNews, that idea of ”underserved” communities came up, and one person made an excellent point — one that’s really stuck with me — that people I think of as underserved may be very well served media-wise (and maybe library-wise, too). They’re likely getting their news and information from other sources that I’m not tuned into.

So do I continue laboring to get those people into our news process? All those people who are difficult to recruit into being news sources for American Public Media, Minnesota Public Radio and our news partners — teens, recent immigrants, Asian Americans, people with little money, the politically conservative, people without college degrees, the theologically conservative, American Indians, Wyomingites, etc.?

A big part of why we have been wanting for years to work with libraries is because libraries have built strong relationships with people of all sorts of backgrounds. People who don’t trust us, or don’t feel comfortable talking with us, trust and rely on libraries. The people who have participated in LibrariUS thus far are much more diverse in age and race (and ethnicity) than the makeup of the Public Insight Network. I suspect they are more diverse in education and income as well, but we don’t ask for this information.

Anyhow, I don’t have an answer for whom I should be getting to participate in the news. Maybe the answer is to work with ethnic and other media so people who gravitate to them will have more opportunities to participate in their news coverage.

3. One concrete idea for librarian-journalist collaboration that came out of a breakout session was for libraries to train people in how to use the digital recorders that some libraries have to lend out. Journalists could also participate in the trainings to teach interviewing skills. Then newly-equipped community members can go out to collect stories from their neighborhoods, schools, families and places of worship. Journalists could do some training on how to edit audio pieces. Stories would get archived at the library, and also posted to the web — for example, on a map of the neighborhood.

4. A second concrete idea that would be easy to implement is to add links to online news stories that let readers access relevant library databases and other resources. A librarian could recommend useful links.

Bracing for program June 25 at American Library Association in New Orleans. Bill Densmore, Mike Fancher and Nancy Kranich will speak about BiblioNews, libraries and journalism. The program will be repeated live July 13 online through ALA Virtual Conference (sorry–there’s a fee, about $70). Details to follow.

WOW, very rich, detailed report back from our fellow friendly Fellows at the Reynolds Journalism Institute, who presented their projects and research at the University of Missouri.

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/04/live-blog-at-rji-fellows-share-lessons-from-spotus-noozyou118.html

Featuring @mayerjoy’s findings on community engagement and @lskube’s new question answer platform, the Journalism Accelerator http://journalismaccelerator.com

David Cohn from Spot.Us and the Carnival of Journalism is always a wonderful touch as well.

w00t Fellows…w00t.

Seen this folks? Amazon to Launch Library Lending for Kindle Books http://bit.ly/g1KcY6

For those of you who wish to follow libraries and civic engagement activities, participate in the ALA Libraries Foster Civic Engagement Membership Initiative Group on Sunday mornings at ALA conferences. You can also follow us

Civic Engagement Blog-http://discuss.ala.org/civicengagement/

Join us on ALA Connect–http://connect.ala.org/node/64933

Subscribe to ALA’s Civic Engagement listserv:

1. Go to: http://lists.ala.org/wws
2. Click on “View All Lists”
3. Scroll down to “deliberate@ala.org”
4. Click on “Subscribe”

–Nancy Kranich, Chair, ALA Center for Public Life Advisory Committee