Review of: Encouraging the Digital Economy and Digital Citizenship

‘Encouraging the digital economy and digital citizenship’ is a manuscript based on a speech given by Roxanne Missingham at the ALIA Public Libraries Summit. Roxanne Missingham is currently President of ALIA and Parliamentary Librarian, Australian Parliamentary Library. She has also worked as Assistant Director, Resource Sharing Services at NLA, at the CSIRO and the Australian Nature Conservation Agency. (Greenhill, n.d.)
This article focuses mainly around the digital economy in Australia and how it is important for everyone to have access to the internet. Missingham focuses on the fact that everyone still does not have equal access to the internet and how this is affecting a variety of rural areas throughout Australia. Missingham’s main argument is the fact that the government and others in the information sector need to focus on providing equal internet access to all people in Australia to allow equal access to learning, government, retail etc.
Missingham focuses on both negative and positive achievements that have happened over the past few years in regards to the internet throughout Australia and therefore provides a fairly well-rounded piece of information that allows her audience to gain an understanding of how the Australian digital environment is running. However because she is speaking with a specific agenda she is always going to be pushing for the fact that more needs to be done in regards to rural areas and their access to the internet, and therefore much of her information is focused in on this area.
This article can be taken as a well informed look into the rural areas of Australia and the internet’s influence on these areas, or lack of influence. Through this article the audience is able to gain a greater understanding of an area that has often been left untouched and are able to gain greater knowledge into the effects of the digital divide throughout Australia. Missingham puts a personal focus into her information, focusing on her home town, therefore providing the audience with a real town to relate to, and allowing them to understand the effects of the digital divide on a personal level.
Through this article the audience is able to gain an understanding on what the government is doing in regards to the digital divide and what still needs to be done to continue to fix these problems. Missingham provides concise information on how the government runs and what has been said in regards to the problem. However she also places a large emphasis on the fact that there is still a lot that needs to be done.
As this article was originally a speech presented at an ALIA summit it provides a lot more personal opinions and information then an article written simply to inform. The audience needs to take care when reading this article to make sure they distinguish between what is fact and what is Missingham’s opinion. Despite this fact Missingham’s article can still be read with confidence in regards to Web 2.0 and the affect it is having on the knowledge sector and digital citizenship. Missingham focuses a great deal on the fact that the digital world is playing a large role on the knowledge sector and it is for this very reason that something needs to be done about the digital divide between rural and urban areas.
Overall Missingham provides a great deal of information in regards to these areas, but still leaves the topic open, showing that there is still a great deal to be done before this area will be concluded.
Missingham, R. (2009) Encouraging the Digital Economy and Digital Citizenship. Australian Library Journal, 58(4), 386-399.
Greenhill, K. (n.d.) LINTerview with Roxanne Missingham: Parliamentary Librarian. In Libraries Interact. Retrieved from: http://librariesinteract.info/2007/05/24/linterview-with-roxanne-missingham-parliamentary-librarian/