http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1564 Allerton Park Institute Proceedings (No. 19, 1973); Edited by Cora E. Thomassen http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1616 CATV and Libraries: Issues and Challenges Shank, Russell The rise of cable television is only one of the technical manifestations of several major social changes taking place that involve the manner, the content, and the intensity of communication among people. The true challenges of cable television to librarianship can be discerned only through an understanding of these changes. It is in this context that this is written. The first major change to be noted is the advent of the information age which is rapidly supplanting the industrial age. The information age has been spawned by society's increasing reliance on an almost overwhelming growth in the amount of data and information being generated, for varied, and often overlapping, missions. There is so much data and information that even those who generate it have trouble coping with its meaning. Politics, actions, decisions of all kinds in all sectors of society are more and more sustained by information technology. In the words of a recent Conference Board report: Advances in the storage, retrieval, processing and distribution of information make up the central technological achievements of the twentieth century's third quarter. Within two decades these new information technologies have become an indispensable part of the web that hold society together. If it had to get along without these technologies, the business life of the United States would be imperiled to the point of disaster. The new ways of handling information have brought about fundamental changes in governmental and political processes. They have altered the psychological and cultural attitudes of hundreds of millions who have only the haziest notions of how the new technology works. Libraries and television Cable television http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1615 A Public Access Workshop Mariano, Bobby A public access workshop is a video-cable facility open and available for use to everyone in the community. The following is a description of the essential workings of such a facility based on the experiences of the Alternate Media Center in helping to set up workshops in DeKalb, Illinois; Orlando, Florida; and Reading, Pennsylvania, among others. In these communities, with the financial help of the local cable companies, public access channels are now in operation which are completely operated by volunteers, with only one or two paid coordinators. Through the use of these facilities anyone may reserve time on the community access cable channel on a first-come-first-served basis. The workshop's equipment includes portapaks, cameras, editing decks, monitors, microphones, lights, telephones and modulators. What is unique to these three projects, however, is the fact that these workshops each control their own public access channel, which has both live and tape capability. Their volunteers teach free classes in the use of video recorders, editing decks and cablecasting equipment. The Access Workbook, a complete documentation of how these centers operate, as well as a detailed analysis of the use of the particular equipment configurations, has recently been published by the Alternate Media Center at New York University School of the Arts. Therefore, what I will describe in this paper will be the vital psychological dimension involved in this new medium. Learning how to use portable television equipment is becoming increasingly easy. What remains difficult is learning how to communicate with these new technologies learning how to use these tools to accomplish what is most needed. Libraries and television Cable television http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1614 The Video Policy Statement Esteves, Roberto Probably the greatest obstacle to librarians becoming involved with cable technology is their own inertia and natural hesitancy to pioneer in a new field. There are many good reasons why librarians would rather wait for developments and solutions offered by others experienced in coping with cable communications. For example, unused to the interface of technology with library operations, many librarians fear being thought ignorant and also feel an insecurity resulting from a lack of experience with this newest of communications hardware. Furthermore, by dealing with community video producers, cable operators and franchising agents, the librarian must assume a role that extends beyond the normal perimeters of library service. However, certain circumstances urge immediate aggression by librarians into the development of cable television. If libraries ever hope to use cable or video communications and attain some of the projected possibilities that have been outlined by other papers in this volume, they must become involved now, during the developmental stages of the media. The Federal Communications Commission has opened the door by allowing five years for the experimentation in the use of cable television for local community programming. Even so, in 1977 the FCC will re-evaluate the free provision of local public access, educational and local government channels, and reassess the public interest use of these channels. Libraries and television Cable television http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1613 Cable Television as an Information Tool Dowlin, Ken Public libraries are going through a period of great change. Historically they have provided the majority of their services to educated people; have emphasized collection development in the area of literature and history; and have been essentially a middle-class institution. For public libraries not only to survive, but to play an important role in the community, they must change their operations to reflect the idea that information is their most important product. Most libraries say that they do provide information, but few of them consider information in its fullest context. The information I refer to could be provided by one institution. Not only information needed for education and self-education, but information needed for everyday life should be provided. Having done many home projects, I am very much aware of the information problems for these kinds of activities. For example, where does one go to find the best bonding agent for putting paneling on a cement wall? Most people ask their lumber yard, which, in many cases, knows the answer. Many public libraries have on their shelves magazines such as Popular Mechanics which can answer these questions, but the person needing the information immediately seldom thinks of the library as a source of this kind of information. Libraries and television Cable television http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1612 Potentials of Interactive Cable Television Katz, Lawrence W. New forms and imaginative uses of telecommunications can make contributions of fundamental importance to meeting and solving nearly every major problem of urban society and urban life. The report recently issued by the Committee on Telecommunications of the National Academy of Engineering, whose membership is widely representative of government, industry, and national civic groups, states: Our cities have many problems in urgent need of solutions. City governments have a requirement for closer communications with their citizens and readier response to citizen needs. City schools are less than satisfactory in providing quality education to the nation's youth. Medical care is inadequate for the cities' poorer and older citizens. Individualized transportation is clogging the streets and polluting the air. Public transportation is often inefficient and unattractive to its users. Law enforcement agencies have difficulty in coping with a growing crime rate. The Committee believes that modern communications technology, thoughtfully applied, can help in relieving many of these problems and in upgrading the level of city life. This conviction has been further confirmed as a result of the Committee's in-depth study of city operations, and a continuing exchange of ideas with officials in a cross-section of U.S. cities. Libraries and television Cable television http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1611 CATV as a Medium for Information Access Kenney, Brigitte L. While defining terms with which everyone is familiar may be boring, I will define information because I feel that some librarians do not believe in information, but only in the containers in which information comes; sometimes these are books, sometimes something else. Bear this in mind: I believe that librarians should deal with information, not containers. Information is a series of facts a datum, a picture, something quite static. Nothing happens to information until it is used, communicated, or transmitted. As this communication process takes place, as this picture or this fact is read, heard, or seen, something happens to the person receiving it. If he can relate the information to something he already knows, learning takes place. To complicate the picture, he may react emotionally, as well as intellectually, to the information. If an archconservative person finds out that one of his most deeply held beliefs has been thoroughly debunked, he will probably be angry. If you see a picture of a dead person, or a small baby in its mother's arms, or you hear a beautiful song, you will also react emotionally. Songs and paintings are information, because they convey a message when viewed, sent, or heard. Information, then, is something static that, when received by someone, evokes an intellectual or emotional response and, when related to previous knowledge, may result in learning. Libraries and television Cable television http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1610 Franchising Problems and Procedures In CATV Mullally, Donald P. Keller, James S. Douglass, Edward F. Donald P. Mullally: I will discuss franchising what it is and why we do it. James Keller will discuss franchising from the company's point of view and what he, as a franchise's applicant, does. Edward Douglass will discuss franchising from the public's point of view what public bodies should be concerned with, how they should go about their business and consider some of the public interest considerations. I think some cities do a great job and some cities do a poor job. Everyone will be able to determine what could be done in his or her location to improve the situation, or to assure themselves of a system that is going to be adequate for their needs. A franchise is, essentially, a right granted to a company or an organization to operate a CATV system in a given location for a given period of time and usually with certain kinds of restrictions. It may be an exclusive franchise which says only one company will be allowed to operate a CATV system in a given location for any given period of time; or it may be a nonexclusive franchise which states that at some future time the right is reserved to grant another franchise of the same sort to another competative company. Libraries and television Cable television http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1609 What the Industry Can Offer: The Next Community Network Keller, James S. The topic assigned to me was "What the Industry Can Offer" an impossible topic to discuss because the industry is currently made up of such diverse viewpoints. My own company, which is the fourth largest cable television company in the country and has facilities in 1 16 cities, is undergoing a major transitional stage. The communications technology being developed now is limited only by our imagination. So I tried to subtitle my speech and came up with the following: "What does industry offer, what can it offer the library?" which is a variation of "How do you see your profession?" which led to "What is a library?" Others were "How much do you need, how soon?" "Is a depository enough?" "The society's convenience and the need to know," "The medium of plenty or the medium of waste," and, of course, 'The communications revolution" or "How to compete in the communications explosion," "When we do what we can do, what can you do?" "Community information center," or "The library as a community resource center." Libraries and television Cable television http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1608 Libraries and CATV: Some Hopes and Fears Mullally, Donald P. I have been trying to decide what it is that librarians do, and I see that the traditional role of librarians has changed greatly. They are no longer merely the custodians of shelves of dusty books, the shushers of small children, the sorters of cards, and the extorters of fines from miscreant bookborrowers. If we examine the full range of their activities, the only thing we can say is that they help people get access to information, help people find new ways of enriching their lives, and play a large role in community development. Some librarians administer systems that serve these ends, which may be just another way of saying that libraries, like universities, are cultural and educational institutions, and those institutions may, in the long run, turn out to be among the heaviest users of CATV. Figure 1 is a picture of a CATV system, which I will explain somewhat superficially. Over-the-air television signals are captured by the array of special antennas, and are sent to the headend for processing or "cleaning up" the interference is removed, the color balance is corrected, and all channels are brought to the same level of strength. Other signals are delivered from distant cities by microwave, and are processed in the same way. Libraries and television Cable television http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1567 Index to CATV and its implications for libraries : proceedings of a conference Libraries and television Cable television Index