Beginning in the fall of 2011, the Community Informatics Research Lab at The Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) started gathering information about how organizations in Champaign-Urbana use information technologies. The idea was to create a portrait of our collective use of digital tools and the Internet before the fiber optic network, UC2B, was put in the ground. This way, individuals and organizations in CU can both reflect on current use of IT and look toward the future. One aspect of UC2B is a 1Gb local area connection; this lays the infrastructure for much inter-organizational sharing, such as broadcasting video from one children’s event to another after-school program, or streaming interactive PTA meetings. 

Click here to link to the complete book, which includes 10-page reports on each of about 80 organizations.

The research process began with a list of UC2B Anchor Institutions, most of which were organizations that were included in the original grant to receive free connections to UC2B. These include places of worship, community organizations and social service agencies, government agencies, schools, health institutions, housing organizations, libraries, and public safety and transportation agencies. A full list is below, with links to pages about each organization. If you are from any of these organizations, or know a lot about them, please feel free to edit their wiki page!

Once the organizations said they were willing to participate in the study, graduate students from the GSLIS courses Community Informatics and The Digital Divide conducted field work and wrote 2-3 reports each throughout the semester, which were then edited and compiled into a book by the CI Lab. The field work for each organization included three interviews with a director or leader, a technology person, and a board member or volunteer; textual research; photos and mapping; questionnaires; and an Internet speed test. Included in each report is an executive summary, maps, photographs, demographics, history of the organization, a technology inventory, an analysis and a bibliography. To access the final book, click on the link above. To see information on any of the organizations, click on a name below.

Churches and Religious Organizations

Community and Social Service Agencies

Government Agencies

Educational Institutions

Health Care Organizations

Public Safety

Housing

Libraries

Transportation