On Dragonflies, Teens, and Technology
By Walt Crawford
American Libraries Columnist
Senior analyst, Research Libraries Group
Column for March 2004
Some say the Dragonfly Project is all about technology. Others say it really isn’t about technology at all. Either way you look at it, the Dragonfly Project—the 2003 winner of the ALA Marshall Cavendish Award (AL, Sept. 2003, p. 62)—shows the best of smaller community-oriented libraries at work: bringing different ethnic groups and ages together to everyone’s mutual benefit, making better use of available resources, and strengthening the community.
To quote the project’s web page, “The Dragonfly Project is a program funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to help the Native community and general public learn how to use the technology resources available at the library.” That page, a part of Haines Borough (Alaska) Public Library’s website, describes itself as “Bringing technology awareness to the community.”
Haines is a beautiful community of 1,800 people some 16 miles down the Taiya Inlet from Skagway. Next time you’re in southeastern Alaska, try the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve float and cruise—a wonderful way to see bald eagles up close, after which you can visit downtown Haines, including its new public library, completed in January 2003.
I learned about the Dragonfly Project a year ago, during the Alaska Library Association’s 2003 annual conference in Juneau. The Native community in this case is the Chilkoot Indian Association, the government of the Chilkoot Tlingit tribe, which worked with the library on the project.
The Dragonfly Project encourages “tech-savvy young people from ages 11 to 21,” many of them Chilkoot, to share their computer skills with others as mentors. In the process, the youth “learn how to use the library’s technology and resources, develop materials and techniques to teach concepts and skills, do community outreach, and work one-on-one with a wide variety of people.”
As described at AkLA, that process ranges from preparing brief, perceptive brochures for software to true transgenerational mentoring—a 12-year-old sitting patiently with an 80-year-old, showing the elder how to prepare a greeting card while the youth learns patience and communication skills.
Why the dragonfly? The project explains: “In Tlingit mythology, dragonflies are thought to be transports of the human soul for shamans, symbols of transformation. Our hope is by helping young people teach adults the ways of computer technology, lives will be transformed.”
It’s about people and resources
Is it all about the technology? Not really. The computer hardware and software, and the library services that enhance them, are tools—resources to enhance people’s lives. The Dragonfly Project is a community-building program, using the tools and youthful enthusiasm for those tools as ways to bring groups together and make the resources more effective. As the website says, “Showing people how the library’s technology can benefit and enrich their lives is at the center of the program”—which is quite different than focusing on the technology itself.
A new phase of the project makes that distinction even clearer. From October 2003 through June 2004, interested young people are developing their movie-making skills to produce five short films on different Tlingit subjects. They are also sharing their skills with others in the community through classes and individualized instruction. The tools are movie cameras (I’m guessing digital videocams) and video-editing software. The results should be young people with more self-confidence and demonstrable skills, ready to pass those skills along—and, in the process, a new set of video documents on Tlingit life.
One outcome of the Dragonfly Project is a portfolio for each young mentor who completes the program—tangible evidence of that person’s abilities. For the most part, these aren’t kids groomed for Ivy League colleges all their lives; Haines is a small town in a lightly populated and remote area. Coming out of the Dragonfly Project, these young people will know themselves better, have more self-confidence, and be more aware of the connections that make communities. I’m guessing most of them will also wind up reading more books than they would have otherwise.
I was blown away by the Dragonfly Project when I attended the AkLA program. Technology may be the center that makes it all work, but the technology serves as a tool to build community and enhance people’s lives. It’s public librarianship at its best, and a fine balance of technology and humanity.
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