Article and report written by Angela Siefer and reposted via OCLC’s WebJunction.

FULL REPORT Trail-Blazing Digital Inclusion Communities

Increasing a community’s access to and use of information technology requires collaboration among libraries, local government, non-profits, and business. This is a fundamental basis of Building Digital Communities: A Framework for Action (The Framework), a resource that helps communities chart a course toward digital inclusiveness. For the past year, we at WebJunction have been providing support to and documenting the work of communities piloting The Framework.

Milwaukee is one of the communities piloting The Framework. Milwaukee is taking all the right steps: they have a local leadership team consisting of the City, the library and a leading non-profit; they partnered with a university to conduct an information technology access and use survey (analysis and report in process); they gathered an initial group of stakeholders into a digital inclusion advisory group; and they are planning a digital inclusion stakeholder summit to share results of the survey and define the digital inclusion goals and needs of the community. Then they asked a really good question – Who are the trail-blazing digital inclusion communities?

We researched the answer to their question and are happy to now be releasing the briefing report “Trail-Blazing Digital Inclusion Communities“. The report is a resource for all libraries (and other community leaders) who want to establish sustainability for their digital inclusion work.