Courtesy of Flickr user Paolo Màrgari

When we last wrote about Knight's Library Initiative, it was a $3.3 million effort to empower libraries in 12 communities to become true information centers for their communities, with expanded wifi access, mobile computing labs, job-hunting assistance, digital literacy training and more. Today, Knight's announcing an expansion of that effort - the Foundation will distribute $5.5 million to  20 communities around the country:

Strengthening residents’ ability to use the Internet to improve their lives, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will help libraries in 20 U.S. communities enhance digital access and training.

The effort is part of the foundation’s $5.5 million Library Initiative.  Launched in October, Knight is expanding it to eight additional communities, the foundation announced today.

In October, the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy released its report, finding that libraries are critical to a community's information infrastructure. Today's grant announcement signals Knight's commitment to helping usher these institutions into the digital era.

Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger:

Peter M. Shane, Executive Director of the Knight Commission, gave a talk on the Knight Commission and its work on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, which was organized to recommend policy reforms and other public initiatives to help American communities better meet their information needs.

Here is a sample of what he had to say:

“Journalistic institutions do not need saving so much as they need creating. The 2007 Newspaper Association of America of daily newspapers in the United States was 1,422. At the same time, there are 3,248 counties, encompassing over 19,000 incorporated places and over 30,000 “minor civil divisions” having legal status, such as towns and villages. It follows that hundreds, if not thousands of American communities receive only scant journalistic attention on a daily basis, and many have none. Even accounting for community weeklies—a 2004 survey identified 6,704 such papers nationwide—it is likely that many American communities get no attention from print journalism at all.”

“The key thought here is that we need not just to preserve journalism where it exists; we need to create it where it does not.  This is all the more important because, without some remedial action, there is going to be less and less local news in the years ahead as newspapers cut staff, which seems inevitable as things are going.”

You can read the rest here.

This week, Knight Foundation and Gallup announced the second year of results from the Soul of the Community study - a three-year survey of almost 28,000 residents of the 26 Knight communities exploring what attaches people to where they live.

Two years of research have reinforced the finding that the top three community characteristics that connect to the passion and loyalty residents feel for a place are openness (how welcoming a place is), social offerings (fun places to gather) and aesthetics (an area's physical beauty and green spaces). These qualities rose to the top in both years of the study, despite its occurrence against the backdrop of the U.S. financial crisis.

The study also found that community attachment is tied to local GDP growth - communities with higher attachment saw the largest growth in their economies. In the third year of the study, researchers will explore this connection further.

At the Soul of the Community site, you can dig into the findings from the study - compare results from all 26 communities on an interactive map, add your thoughts and insights to the perspectives posted on our blog, view detailed reports from all the communities, read coverage from news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, and even download the actual data, if you'd like.

This post was written as a collaborative project by Knight's 2009 summer interns.

On Tuesday, June 23 Knight Foundation staff members and summer interns attended a performance of FUERZABRUTA at the Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Centeras guests of Dennis Scholl, the Communities Program Director for Miami. 

FUERZABRUTA is an interactive visual spectacle that packs six to eight hundred people into a dark room for an hour. Eight cast members manipulate the dynamic set pieces with their bodies and engage the audience with disposable props and pumping music. A giant treadmill and a plastic pool suspended over the heads of the audience make up most of the set. 

It’s easy to get swept up in the sensory show; audience members touch, throw, dance and move from place to place like the actors do. In a recent performance, one audience member got carried away and was kicked out for repeatedly punching the plastic pool.

The show has been touring for three years, debuting in Argentina and traveling across the U.S. as well as to countries like the U.K., Brazil and Mexico. One cast member noted contrasting energies between audiences in New York and in Miami. Another performer said that in Argentina the show is considered more a theatre piece than a work of conceptual art. Apparently the experience changes from city to city and from night to night, but everyone agrees the real party happens on the weekends.

This entry was originally posted on the infoneeds.org blog for the Miami seminar on Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. Find more on the site; the seminar continues until this afternoon.

Moderated by Paula Ellis, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Knight Foundation, three community foundation leaders shared their experiences.

Andrea Bazán of the Triangle Community Foundation talked about balancing history and future with community foundation strategy:

Josie Heath of the Community Foundation Serving Boulder County talked about a shared future if not a shared past:

Paula Ellis talked about the current conversations about journalism in service to history:

An audience member talked about the upcoming launch of the game Ruby's Bequest about community and donorship:

Emmett Carson of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation talked about ageism and its detrimental effects:

And all the panelists talked about where their leadership journey has taken them:

Comments or thoughts for the panelists or other attendees?

This was first posted on the event site, infoneeds.org. Find more video and previous posts there. The event continues until this afternoon.

Last night, Kati London and Kevin Slavin of the serious game development firm area/code talked about how games can change how we live in the real world.

Kevin talked about the "fundamental cognitive shift" games have produced:

He also talked about the role of games in culture in response to an audience question:

and making games social:

Katie presented three projects addressing specific information needs, including this one, called "Ant City":

And Kevin reminded everyone that games have to be fun:

What did you think about the panel?

Until 5 PST today, you can watch the live webcast of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy from Google HQ in Mountain View, CA. Videos from yesterday's Knight Commission Community Forum are on Flickr here.

If you're in the NYC area this evening, there is an informational event tonight from 7 - 9pm at CUNY Journalism School, Room 308, about the $5 million this year in the News Challenge, a yearly contest about innovative digital news delivery. The Facebook invite has more details. Future News Challenge events will be listed on this blog soon.

Questions? Thoughts? Let us know in the comments--

Knight Commissioner danah boyd asked the distinguished guests of first community forum panel at the Knight Commission meeting at Google about push/pull strategies:

How do you think push/pull works in local news and information dissemination?