Fostering Community through Digital Storytelling: A Guide for Academic Libraries

Anne Fields, subject specialist for English and Karen Diaz, Instruction Librarian, at the Ohio State University Libraries, Columbus, seek to provide a thorough study of how digital storytelling can be used in the academic library and in higher education institutions to foster learning and community.

The work looks at how digital storytelling can be effectively harnessed to realise its potential in the academic library and its usefulness to the university community in general, including students and faculty members. This book will be a useful resource to library managers; library programme co‐ordinators; library marketing staff; and librarians. It is also suitable for college students, university administrators, and faculty members. The general reader will also benefit from this book to gain knowledge about digital storytelling for social networking in the new media.

The authors describe digital stories as “brief multi‐modal digital videos, that in the case of the academic library, engage libraries in personal conversations with their communities”, and “unlike traditional academic discourse, digital stories embrace the emotional side of experience in order to engage listeners”. To them, digital storytelling can be used for: internal organisational development of the academic library; marketing library collections and services; and for fund‐raising. They look at how an academic library can build a programme of digital storytelling within the library and then extend it to the wider campus community, and how workshops as well as partnerships and collaborations across campus can be developed for this purpose.

Fields and Diaz outline the process for creating a digital story in a step‐by‐step way with enough technical details that will not overwhelm the technophobe. They also provide online locations in the Internet where examples of digital stories can be found. They share with the readers their own experiences in creating a digital story. They discuss how digital storytelling is used in online social networking spaces such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Ning and Second Life.

After devoting an entire chapter to how digital stories can be used in the higher education classroom to improve and enhance student learning, the authors zoom in on how digital stories can be used in academic libraries. Digital storytelling is seen as a type of Library 2.0 technology that has great potential in the realm of the academic library.

Digital storytelling can teach students to do research so that they can effectively find the information they are looking for, both online and in the library. It can also be used to teach information literacy skills and to promote the physical collections in a library. The stories can help to tell researchers and library users about a particular collection, where to find them and how it can help them. Other than promoting collections, digital stories are also said to be used in the social spaces in libraries such as library cafes, collaborative worktables, wireless computing areas, exhibition areas, study areas and programme spaces. It is suggested that digital stories about the library's collections and services can be shown over plasma screens in these social spaces.

The authors also discuss in detail how digital storytelling can be put into practice in the campus community. For the library to lead and engage in a digital storytelling programme on campus, the library's administration must support that participation; for example, by bringing in trainers and allowing librarians and staff the time they need to attend a three or four‐day workshop.

Digital stories are said to: help the library appreciate its own strengths; help change users' expectations of libraries; expand users' notions of the library's usefulness and remind them of “hidden or understated benefits” the library provides; and be used as a tool to seek funds for renovation or other special projects. Finally, digital stories can facilitate internal organisational development by making known to staff the breadth and depth of expertise that they bring to the library.

Fields and Diaz describe their vision of the future, a “utopia” where the library digital storytelling programme would operate. In such a utopia, the digital storytelling programme would operate from the library's outreach department. A librarian assisted by an administrative manager would chair this department and among the chair's responsibilities would be to motivate the library's digital storytelling programme. They acknowledge that this utopian vision has “partly come true” on their campus but that it has a long way to go in other respects.

The strengths of this book lie in the detailed treatment of the topic, sharing of personal experiences, ideas and suggestions provided and the work's broad coverage. In undertaking the study, the authors seem to have thought of everything. They provide a detailed picture of the whole subject of digital storytelling, covering it in general and then specifically to academic libraries. They present the stories' general benefits and uses and then zoom in on its specific benefits in the academic library setting.

The authors provide many relevant examples and personal case studies. They also highlight copyright issues and the importance of collaboration and support. They provide details about how to conduct a digital library workshop and how to create and run a digital storytelling programme on campus. One of the value‐adding features of the book is its discussion about how to assess and evaluate the digital storytelling programme.

The book is well‐structured and presented in a systematic way, each chapter detailing an aspect of digital storytelling. The objectives are clearly stated in the introduction and, in the conclusion, the authors assess if the objectives have been met. The contents flow in a logical sequence and the narrative prose is both easy to read and understand. The appendix provides a selected list of websites for digital storytelling. At the end of each chapter, a list of references is provided. An index to the whole work is also provided.

Similar works on digital storytelling focus on the art of creating digital stories and on the use of digital stories in the classroom to promote learning. The unique contribution of this book is that it focuses on the potential of digital storytelling in the niche area of academic libraries and in higher education to foster learning and community. This book is a useful resource and is recommended for both the library specialist and the general reader.