A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Session IV: Common Threads and Next Steps

For the final conference session, participants were asked to address four major issues related to USEIN implementation: equity, customer needs, education information, and management and role of NLE. Participants were asked to recommend and prioritize next steps for NLE action, and to recommend and prioritize methods and procedures for achieving these actions. Descriptions of the charges for each breakout category are provided below.

Equity: Assuming that the basic information storage and retrieval mechanisms are electronic, how can USEIN best ensure access and equity for all?

Customer needs: Assuming the target audience for USEIN is educators, parents, researchers, decision-makers, and students in the education and information services fields, what do we need to know concerning their current and future information needs and information-seeking behaviors?

Education information: How can USEIN best identify education information providers and the content and formats they offer? Based on these findings, how can USEIN identify information and services gaps, and address them?

Management and role of NLE: How can NLE best guide the development of USEIN in terms of (1) appropriate participants and/or contributors; (2) organizational form; (3) incentives; (4) technological standards; and (5) content quality assurance.

Breakout Group Reports

Equity/Red Group: Session IV

The Red Group addressed the use of technology to achieve access. Highlights of its discussion follow.

• Criteria are needed to define underserved populations. Partnership is an important part of equity, so USEIN should keep this in mind when conducting outreach.
• NLE should leverage access/equity efforts with those already doing it.
• Processes are needed for identifying audiences and existing bottlenecks to access, conducting evaluation, carrying out education and outreach to create awareness and change agents to enlarge the access circle, and addressing marketplace globalization - which speaks to such issues as multi-lingual capacity and translation of documents.

Customer Needs/Orange Group: Session IV

The Orange Group recognized that the area of customer needs represents a big task. Highlights of its discussion follow.

• To understand customer needs, we must collect and quantify information. Leaders should be made members of focus groups to discover customer needs.
• Quick, simple, rapid delivery systems should be made available.
• Public libraries are important players.
• Cable and satellite delivery of services should be considered.
• Although it is not a realistic expectation to be able to reach into every home, intermediaries, such as public libraries could be used in this capacity.
• Gaps. Distance learning must be addressed, along with creating higher content expectations. Users are expecting full text and complete materials.
• Marketing. A new name for USEIN is needed, as is a master list of names and institutions.
• Uses of information. There must be a way to discover how end users feel, begging the need for an evaluative capability to get feedback.
• Search terms. Other environmental technologies could serve as possible models for using laymen terms or terms of art to enhance searchability.

Education Information/Yellow Group: Session IV

To begin its discussion, the Yellow Group came up with two related questions: What is information, and who is the provider? They believed it helpful to have a typology to define the type of information out there and the providers of it. They developed a matrix to show delivery of information from and to providers (see chart below). To match providers to the matrix, it is necessary to identify the following: key players (survey would help), type of information they are providing, resources needed, and gaps (EROD might help here).

MATRIX SHOWING DELIVERY OF INFORMATION
FROM AND TO PROVIDERS

The Blue Group identified several next steps for a proposed developmental stage 1, as follows:

• ERIC is a vital player. Potential USEIN information producers include established organizations, teacher associations, users, etc. (see Access for All, p. 5, for a list of suggested participants and users of the network).
• A first task of the working group should be to raise awareness, providing many kinds of feedback mechanisms. NLE should convene reactors and respond to their suggestions. This approach would be new and "virtual" and different from NAL.
• "Grand visions" necessitate focusing on the logistics of carrying them out, including establishing a working group and a vision and eliciting stakeholder perspectives and benefits. This effort should promote network participation and a shared infrastructure.

[Session III]