Media Awareness Network, Canadian libraries launch education campaign

The Media Awareness Network (MNet) has launched a high-profile campaign in association with Bell Canada and the Canadian Library Association (CLA) to equip parents with resources to help guide their children safely on the Internet. Unveiled during Canada’s first Web Awareness Day on February 20, libraries across the country will begin promoting the materials available from MNet, including online educational materials, printed brochures and checklists. Participating libraries will also begin hosting public workshops and open houses, launching joint initiatives with community groups, and announcing upcoming web awareness projects both in their branches and on their web sites. MNet has been working with librarians on an in-house professional development basis, but the Web Awareness Day hallmarks a series of new materials and a parent’s module that can now be promoted by the institutions. So far, support for the initiative has come from provincial governments in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, along with individual libraries across the country including in Montreal and Winnipeg. MNet executive director Jan D’Arcy tells Canadian NEW MEDIA that the choice of the library system as a partner to extend its reach into the community was important. "It means that a small, focused, not-for-profit association like the Media Awareness Network has formed a partnership with a huge public service system," she says. "There are more public libraries in this country than there are McDonalds, and they’ve got a strong reputation as professionals that care about literacy…This is just the first step out of the gate for us on this. We will be developing major outreach strategies at a mass communications level. But having some big stable systems in place makes a public communications strategy real in that you’ve got something really anchored in the real world out there, ready to go. It’s kind of a Canadian approach. It’s not a smoke and mirrors kind of thing. It’s got good substance attached to it. It’s a blue-chip approach." CLA president Wendy Newman says libraries offer significant penetration into the Canadian population, both in-branch and in other ways. She tells CNM that at least two-thirds of Canadians have library cards and host regular workshops on literacy and other related issues. "It’s Canada’s meeting place of ideas and it’s Canada’s informal education system," she says. "Libraries are the organization in the community, along with the school system, that are in the best position to put legs on this locally. But it is a shared responsibility as far as the librarians are concerned. This is a responsibility that we can’t and shouldn’t duck. It’s one we share with parents, schools, police and all people in all organizations who care about the well-being of our children." Increasingly, libraries are under fire, however, because they often offer in-library Internet access, which can be used to view objectionable content. In Ottawa, the head of the library services committee, for example, has recently called on the city’s library branches to begin filtering access, something the CLA and others have opposed. Newman says the media literacy program now being aimed at parents and their children tie in with the organization’s philosophy. "What the Canadian Library Association and libraries have said is that it’s the internal software of our children that is going to protect their well-being – their critical thinking skills and their values." She says no filters can substitute for parents aware of the issues and who have the know-how to guide their children’s online activities. While recent MNet studies have shown that parents aren’t as aware as they could be about their children’s surfing habits (CNM, Nov. 2/01 and July 25/01), it’s hoped the new outreach program will convince parents that they don’t have to be as Internet-savvy as their kids to help. Noting that parents feel the stresses of time and technology, Newman says, "The issues aren’t in proficiency. They’re in having some understandings in a family about where to locate a computer; whether or not people should be online if there’s no adult at home; what sites are visited; what the rules are about giving out one’s name, gender, address, anything else that compromises privacy."

Media Awareness Network, Canadian libraries launch education campaign

News | 03/06/2003 5:00 am EST

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