Bringing back Libraries
A High Level Overview
Income inequality is arguably the most pressing problem America faces. Eighty percent of Americans make up only around ten percent of the nation’s income, and poor Americans are subject to a host of injustices. They are disproportionately harmed by pollution and the criminal justice system; they are denied the same access to opportunity that their wealthier peers receive. Gaps in education can be attributed to income inequality and these gaps have only grown by COVID-19-induced lockdowns. With companies holding communication skills as the most desired skill in employees, our group wants to decrease the gap shown in Figure 1 by improving students’ communication skills. There is a correlation between students’ communication skills and their reading and writing achievement. By improving students’ ability to engage with others in meaningful dialogue would result in an improvement in their reading and writing skills and would improve their chances for employment. By focusing on developing communication skills in low-income students, we are working towards breaking the cycle of poverty and reducing income inequality in America.
The Problem to Solve
We believe that by increasing their connection with libraries by designing local libraries to have unique resources, low-income families will be able to increase interaction with each other as well as access to reading and writing assistance to help improve K-12 students’ communication skills.
After seeing that some of the most influential nodes in our systems map included resources, such as access to technology, and reading skills, we thought that connecting students to libraries would be an effective way to increase student communication skills.
Our Customers’ Needs
As a teacher in a low-income school system, I want to use effective educational tools to facilitate learning both inside and outside of the classroom.
As a librarian, I want to increase my ability to reach students in need so that I can help them develop their communication skills so that they can use them to succeed in obtaining a job that they desire.
As a local business, I want a platform to advertise my business and grow my customer base.
As a student, I want to increase my communication skills so that I can increase my ability to obtain a fulfilling job.
By putting ourselves in the shoes of our customers, we can better understand their needs and what value we could provide them. We will keep this in mind when testing assumptions and running experiments.
Our Value Proposition
By integrating a library’s resources into a single, comprehensive and user-friendly platform we can offer teachers a means to help their students have access to library resources so that they are better prepared for the classroom.
By integrating a library’s resources into a single, comprehensive, and user-friendly platform we can offer librarians more effective usage of the resources they provide and more customers.
By integrating a library’s resources into a single, comprehensive and user-friendly platform we can offer local businesses a platform for them to advertise and increase their customer reach.
By integrating a library’s resources into a single, comprehensive and user-friendly platform we can offer students easier access to resources that help them improve their communication skills, which will help them obtain jobs in the future.
We chose to pinpoint the unique value we provide to each of our customer segments separately. This organization will help us prioritize our customers as we want to focus on our students and teachers.
Our Assumptions
Assumption 1:
What: Libraries in low-income areas are struggling and interested in working with us to improve function.
How: Discuss pending improvements and struggles with management
Where: Low-income area libraries
Assumption 2:
What: Students are interested and able to access their local libraries
How: Contact school systems, send out surveys
Where: Same low-income area communities whose libraries we’re looking into
Assumption 3:
What: Libraries do not have funding to accomplish their goals
How: Find their financials, https://georgialibraries.org/statistics/, talk with them to see if they are struggling to accomplish their goals because of a lack of funding
Where: Same low-income area libraries
We chose our assumptions based on which ones were most impactful to our project as well as which ones we were the most worried about. We found that for our project to be most successful, we would need our first two assumptions to be correct. For the third assumption, we do not heavily depend on it being true, but we do need to know the answer so that we know how to proceed with our project.
Our Experiments
Experiment for Assumption 1
If we contact local libraries and survey librarians with specific questions, both qualitative and quantities, we will better understand what bottlenecks keep them from trying new technical solutions. By understanding library budgets as well as their bureaucratic process, we will determine the viability of other potential experiments and ultimately our solution.
Experiment for Assumption 2
If we measure student engagement on local computers and the type of material and library programs that they currently interact with as done by Celano and Neuman, we can compare this to a survey we provide to these same customers asking about their opinions on their library to see if their current engagement matches what they’d like to be engaged with in the library (Celano, Neuman). From this, we can verify whatever solutions we come up with against what students are proven to engage with in libraries and what improvement students tend to desire. The survey can be distributed by the libraries, but we also would like to speak with students in schools who are not currently engaged with libraries. We can therefore distribute the survey to schools close to the low-income libraries we may be studying. We may choose to conduct this experiment locally (Atlanta area) since we may more easily access management and administration of libraries and schools.
Experiment for Assumption 3
If we contact local libraries and ask them if the reason, they have not been able to achieve the improvements that they want to is because of a lack of funding or something else, we can determine whether they suffer from a lack of funding or a different issue. We want to run our experiments with low-income libraries, and our measurement for whether or not they lack funding is that if they mention funding as an issue, then they do not have the necessary funding to achieve their goals.
We chose experiments that would easily help us achieve our goal and involve the people that we are currently making assumptions about. Our experiment for additional assumption 2 also gives libraries an opportunity to specify what they do need help with if it is not a lack of funding so that we can get right to work.
Works Cited
Connect My Community. “Library Offers Free Take-Home Internet.” Accessed November 23, 2020. http://connectmycommunity.org/project-view/library-offers-free-take-home-internet/.
Dorn, Emma, Bryan Hancock, and Ellen Viruleg. “COVID-19 and Student Learning in the United States: The Hurt Could Last a Lifetime | McKinsey.” Accessed November 23, 2020. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/covid-19-and-student-learning-in-the-united-states-the-hurt-could-last-a-lifetime.
Neuman, Susan B., and Donna Celano. “The Knowledge Gap: Implications of Leveling the Playing Field for Low-Income and Middle-Income Children.” Reading Research Quarterly 41, no. 2 (April 6, 2006): 176–201. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.41.2.2.
