In sum, the series of observations and interviews comprise a collection of cases. Case studies are a kind of inquiry into a specific social context that enable researchers to decipher the complexities inherent in true-to-life situations. They can help to establish validity by accommodating diversity and uncertainty, and they facilitate the emergence and comprehensive development of research ideas because they can incorporate multiple sources of data (Berg 2004, Eisenhardt 1989). They are often used as the basis to develop theory in an inductive fashion by “recognizing patterns of relationships among constructs within and across cases and their underlying logical arguments” (Eisenhardt and Graebner 2007, also see Eisenhardt 1989 and Stake 1994). I was drawn to happenings on account of uniqueness or ordinariness, and the application of my external theoretical frame: digital literacy. In this sense my work was somewhere between exploratory and descriptive (Yin 1994); it elicited elements of discovery, confirmation, snapshot descriptions, and emphasis on issues encountered on multiple visits and in outliers. It allowed for more robust storytelling that helped to challenge presuppositions and distinguish new constructs.
Functionally, interviews were recorded on my cell phone and transcribed for content analysis. Specifically, this meant studying, sorting and analyzing the text based on the frame of my topic. My chosen method for this was a two sweep coding process, based on Berg’s (2004) interpretation of Strauss’ (1987) grounded theory approach. I read through the data multiple times, first annotating it with short snippets of description and comments on thematic observations. Then, after I had familiarized myself with the material I went through a second time to cut it down to stories and topics of interest and began to build second-level codes that tracked ongoing themes. I found that this process was not formulaic, as I skipped around to different interviews and question responses to ask of the data specific and consistent sets of questions, without an overlay of classic socio-analytic categories like race or class, because those didn’t always fit the frame. On the 52
contrary, in my experience with sociology technology-human interactivity elements are often misunderstood, overly criticized or ignored entirely.61 I then selected a series of signature stories found in each site which illustrated different dimensions and issues related to library roles and digital literacy. I took care to avoid redundancy between sites in my stories, even though topics like e-readers came up frequently, and instead chose those that I felt were most representative or revealing of the issues at hand. Though I knew my analysis would, by nature, not be neutral I did my best to find examples of both challenges and successes, as well as opposing viewpoints and contradictions. Part of the reason I needed to be selective was that despite asking the same set of core questions at each location the data I was provided varied. In some locations, for instance, I didn’t even have to draw a map of computing spaces, as the library already had a handout with one, whereas in other locations I couldn’t see all parts of the library. As such the observations were considered to be as subjective and incidental as the interviews: they were dependent on the circumstantial constraints in which my visit took place. After the conclusion of the study site stories were submitted for review and scrutiny by my research committee and location and personal references were then anonymized.
This dissertation study is unusual in its methodological approach partially because of its adherence to asset-based data analysis. Earlier when I introduced it as a work of community informatics I identified the field as a study and pursuit to address community needs, and while it is true that all communities have problems and needs, starting with this as the fundamental focus tends to make a given work about remedying deficiencies and deficits, rather than recognizing and leveraging strengths and assets. Underserved communities are frequently described and defined primarily in terms of their problems, as I myself have done in the justification for the use of census-driven qualifiers. My research, however, largely reflects the reality that communities often have the tools to address their own needs, and may be uniquely or best suited to develop and drive solutions. This is not to say that structural forces are irrelevant or that there are not times when external assistance or perspectives are required, it is instead to simply strive to start the analytic focus with local knowledge. This may provide an initial impression that each of the stories included in this study
61 Or, in the case of Actor-Network Theory and the new sociology of associations (Latour 2005), given as much
attention as any human or ideological agent in the network of patterned relations, which may be the other extreme.
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are selectively optimistic or positive, but, in fact, they represent a wide range of recurrent themes and issues as reflected by members of these communities themselves.
Existing scholarship provides a significant precedent and reasoning for this perspective and approach. Starting as early as two decades ago John Kretzmann and John McKnight (1993) introduced a handbook for asset-based community development. They promoted a model for asset mapping that included local institutions like businesses, parks, hospitals and libraries, associations like church groups and interest organizations and, finally, individuals of all kinds, qualified in terms of their identities and agencies. The approach has grown over the years to include many kinds of studies and fields, finding use in social work (Lightfoot, McCleary and Lum 2014), urban planning (Dennis 2005), health (Harrison et al. 2004), community informatics (Pinkett 2000) and even provoked criticism in relation to social network analysis (Ennis and West 2010) and social good (Macleod and Emejulu 2014). Asset-based community development supplies a recognized and important perspective that is integrated into many scholarly studies of communities, and my own is no exception.
That said, my position is likely somewhere between the alignments for top-down need-oriented and grassroots asset-based analysis techniques. Clearly the concern for digital literacy has been highlighted as a kind of universal reality and challenge, but the examination of it in practice, as will be revealed in the following sections, is much less about what libraries are not doing about it and much more about the unusual and surprising roles libraries are filling and interpreting. This might also be compared to another kind of asset-oriented analysis, typically referred to as positive deviance. A concept initially explored in health-related studies (Zeitlin, Ghassemi and Mansour 1990), positive deviance refers to the possibility that in every community there are individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and perspectives enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers, despite being on relatively equal footing in terms of access to resources or extant challenges (Spreitzer and Sonenshein 2004). The occurrence has been increasingly observed in multiple settings, including those particularly relevant to this study, such as education outcomes (Dura and Singhal 2009, Richardson 2004) or creativity and innovation amongst organizations (Acharya and Taylor 2012). The presence (or lack thereof) of positive deviance in relation to the factors that determine digital literacy—people, policies, activities and infrastructure—was a recurrent frame of analysis as I processed the case study data.
Finally, it must be understood that this work, at its core, is a kind of advocacy research. It pushes beyond the classic, mundane academic scope of measuring an established theory in a novel way or locating and describing an interesting phenomenon. Like other studies of this nature, it may run the risk of inspiring biased views or misunderstood generalizations (Gilbert 2004), which is why I have taken steps to intentionally contextualize all of the data in terms of limited case studies. It was earnestly and necessarily engaged with the current political climate of libraries throughout the period of study. As a researcher I did carry the advantage of being inexperienced and not overly- informed about the topic of the shifting library systems, state funding and educational imperatives present in Illinois at the time. That said, there is simply no way for a study like this to be neutral in the same sense of something like examining the movement of particles under a microscope might be. I once asked one of my advisors if she felt activist motivation behind research was unethical because it could potentially compromise the quality or integrity of her work. She responded by explaining she felt it would be unethical of her not to study the systems of oppression that were being systematically overlooked. The focus on certain or prescribed methods of data collection may sometimes serve the purpose of drawing attention away from the fact that particular data is not even being collected to begin with. This was essentially my concern for validity when I set out to frame the work in the wide terms of people, policies, activities and infrastructure when talking about digital literacy. Despite this predetermined position I still took steps to address validity and reliability in terms of more classic social science.