Wikipedia. MySpace. Flickr. These websites are part of the increasingly popular Web 2.0 movement, consisting of internet sites that allow individuals to easily contribute, share, or edit web content from the comfort of their own homes. Seeking to spread information about this movement to other countries, the U.S. Department of State invited Dr. Stuart W. Shulman, the Director of the Sara Fine Institute and an Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Sciences and Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, to present this topic to 32 Kazakh library personnel in September 2007. Dr. Shulman and his Russian translator spent two of the three days in a seminar setting and one day in a computer lab in Almaty, Kazakhstan working with this group. Using Powerpoint slides translated into Russian by GSPIA PhD student Vera Achvarina, he taught the librarians how to create library pages using the Russian-language version of Meadaiwiki, the freely available platform on which Wikipedia is built. Dr. Shulman notes that his most gratifying experiences during this program were “working through governance issues of the wiki; namely, watching the librarians work together to finally create an organized way to edit their single wiki site.”
Dr. Shulman believes wikis and other Web 2.0 technology are significant inroads for promoting both governmental transparency and “e-citizenship.” To support this view, he argued on his YouTube channel documenting his trip that: “History teaches us that founding moments are not moments at all; they stretch for years and decades. Current and future Kazakh citizens perhaps will find democratic technologies are one bridge to a new way of thinking.” With this new thinking based on popular technology, Kazakhs hopefully will demand with stronger voices a more transparent and democratic government for their country. For more information, pictures, and access to YouTube videos, please visit Dr. Shulman’s trip website or email him.
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