ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case study of a three-year project called Sheffield People's Resource for Information Technology (SPRITE). The SPRITE project was set up as a response to the changing economic environment within Sheffield, the fourth largest city in England. The evaluation of SPRITE is set in the methodological tradition of action research. The major generic characteristics of action research are this emphasis on collaboration between practitioner and researcher, and an emphasis on feedback. Developments in micro-electronics over the last ten years have meant that the ‘information society’ is clearly upon us. The Frontier is a new community centre on the first floor of a municipal library that serves several major housing estates in Sheffield. The evaluation of SPRITE is set in the methodological tradition of action research. The focus of SPRITE’s evaluation was on the processes by which the project developed, and a number of methods of data collection were used.
