FRESH FIELDS AND PAST YOUR SCREEN
| Pages | 12-17 |
| Date | 01 April 1985 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040335 |
| Published date | 01 April 1985 |
| Author | Marilyn Dover |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
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FRESH FIELDS AND PAST YOUR SCREEN, by Marilyn Dover*
The PIRATE(1) project operated by Devon Library Services is a local
community information service which differs in many respects from local
information schemes elsewhere. Although this article will deal with some
specific aspects of its information handling procedures, a grasp of its
origins and of the underlying philosophy is essential as an explanation of
the PIRATE approach.
PIRATE began as a research project, to examine ways in which new technology
could be used to overcome the difficult problems of access to information
in remote rural areas. While some of these problems are common to all
communities,
some are peculiarly rural and the solutions are often
inhibited by the same peculiarly rural factors which give rise to the
problems.
To put it in a nutshell, in remote rural areas you cannot tack
your local information onto a big local authority system, because the local
authority does not have a presence - save the library service. And you
cannot let your community information ride on the library service's mini
because tiny, rural, often part-time libraries are last in the queue when
it comes to handing out terminals. Even if they had terminals, their
staffing levels (also tiny and part-time) preclude there being a
computer/information specialist on tap to mediate and interpret computer-
held information, and anyway, rural residents with computing and
information skills work in towns on the systems which don't reach the rural
parts other systems don't reach.
For all that, in a very large, predominantly rural county like Devon, the
county library service is uniquely placed to act as a channel of
communication both up and down the line; by virtue of its network of
libraries and mobile libraries it creates a contact with every parish, a
ubiquity rivalled only by the refuse collection service. The South Molton
Community Information Project demonstrated how the library service can act
as the catalyst to bring together the voluntary agencies in rural areas to
cooperate in the field of advice and information. This was achieved
through an Information Centre concept where organisations which can offer
only a part-time service time-share to make the most effective use of
limited resources.(1) The aim of PIRATE is to build on that experience and
to put new technology at the disposal of the rural community.
This entails developing a system of information handling which can be
operated through all its stages by the staff and volunteers of these local
organisations. The system has to be capable of generating all sorts of
information, has to be usable, in terms of entering, updating and
manipulating data, by non-professionals with minimal training, and has to
be accessible to the public direct, without the need for an intermediary
and without the need for their being trained in the use of the equipment,
Although we are only a short way down a very long road, our results so far
have been remarkable.
* Marilyn Dover is PIRATE Project/Officer Research
1. The PUBLIC INFORMATION in RURAL AREAS TECHNOLOGY EXPERIMENT project,
PIRATE,
is funded jointly by the British Library Research and
Development Department and the Development Commission.
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