Editing Community informatics (section)

== Networks ==
There are emerging online and personal networks of researchers and practitioners in community informatics and community networking in many countries as well as international groupings.  The past decade has also seen conferences in many countries, and there is an emerging literature for theoreticians and practitioners including the on-line Journal of Community Informatics.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ci-journal.net |title=Journal of Community Informatics |accessdate=30 August 2010 |publisher=Centre for Community Informatics, Research, Development and Training (CCIRDT) & Faculty of Informatics and Design, Cape Peninsula University of Technology }}</ref>

It is surprising in fact, how much in common is found when people from developed and non-developed countries meet. A common theme is the struggle to convince policy makers of the legitimacy of this approach to developing electronically literate societies, instead of a top-down or trickle-down approach, or an approach dominated by technical, rather than social solutions which in the end, tend to help vendors rather than communities. A common criticism that is frequently raised amongst participants at events such as the Prato conferences is that a focus on technical solutions evades the social changes that communities need to achieve in their values, activities and other people-oriented outcomes in order to make better use of technology.

The field tends to have a progressive bent, being concerned about the use of technology for social and cultural development connected to a desire for [[capacity building]] or expanding [[social capital]], and in a number of countries, governments and foundations have funded a variety of community informatics projects and initiatives, particularly from a more tightly controlled, though not well-articulated social planning perspective, though knowledge about long-term effects of such forms of social intervention on use of technology is still in its early stages.

=== Public libraries and community networks===
Even though that community networks and public libraries have similitudes in various ways, there are some obstacles that upset the probability of cooperation in the future between them. Albeit both CNs and libraries are concerned with giving information services to the society, an exchange is by all accounts lacking between the two communities. The mission of libraries is frequently rather barely engaged and, with regards to managing people and different institutes, their methodology can be to some degree unbending. Thusly, CN specialists, while institutionally more adaptable, rush to expel the part of public libraries in the community, tending to see the library essentially as a store of books upheld by public subsidizing. Public libraries have a long-standing custom of association with their communities, yet their conditions and concerns contrast from those of community networks (CNs).<ref name="source35" />