County library computers in short supply

By Charles Taylor
SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Computers bring a virtual public library into every PC owner’s home. But far from making libraries obsolete, computers are increasing demand for their services, according to a recent American Library Association study — and libraries are struggling to keep up.

From homework-help sites to YouTube to social networking sites like MySpace, public library computers are attracting users with a need for speed, the latest technology and lots of bandwidth.

Yet, the ALA study found that the number of public Internet computers in libraries has remained fairly constant since 2002, and 80 percent of libraries say they don’t have enough computers to meet demand at all times.

In Las Vegas-Clark County, library patrons can sometimes wait an hour to 90 minutes for computer access during peak demand hours — after school and after work, according to Robb Morss, a deputy director of the city-county library district. Last fiscal year, his system’s computers were accessed more than 1.8 million times by all users, “and it just keeps going up.”

Kathleen Reif, director of libraries for St. Mary’s County, Md., said in her county the number of library PC users rose 16 percent last fiscal year, but her budget only increased “about 5 percent.”

“The real difficulty that many libraries are facing,” said ALA’s Larra Clark, coauthor of the study, “is that their funding has been flat.”

Added Reif: “We just keep whining to ourselves how we don’t get this money. I think this is an issue that the countywide leaders have to be reading about and thinking about, not just librarians.”

Among the study’s other findings:

• 76 percent of public libraries reported that space limitations are the top factor limiting their ability to add computers.
• 52 percent of libraries reported their connectivity speed is insufficient some or all of the time, an increase of about 6 percent from the previous year.

The Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study gathered data through a national survey, a questionnaire sent to heads of state library agencies, and through focus groups and site visits in four states: Delaware, Maryland, Nevada and Utah.

Today’s library users want computers as fast and up-to-date as what they’re used to at work and at home, librarians said, and they want to be able to access media-rich sites without glitches. It’s a challenge libraries can’t always meet.

Patrons accessing a bandwidth-hogging “March Madness” basketball Web site in Baltimore County, Md. libraries last year nearly crashed the network, said Mary Hastler, assistant director of libraries. This year — with apologies to patrons — the site was blocked. “Our bandwidth just couldn’t handle the demand that we have with our customers.”

For libraries facing a shortage of workstations, adding more PCs isn’t always an option: Many are constrained by a lack of space to expand outmoded infrastructure. Thirty-one percent of libraries ALA surveyed reported that the availability of electrical outlets, cabling or other infrastructure issues limited their adding more computers.

“Our libraries are all small libraries,” said Carol Fitzgerald, a Sussex County, Del. librarian. “Most of them are pretty well maxed-out with the number of computers they can have, because they just don’t have enough space to put them.”

How county libraries are coping
Fitzgerald said library patrons in her county come in expecting computers to be “state-of-the-art,” not under-powered hand-me-downs. Thanks to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Sussex County is keeping pace.

In 2003, the foundation donated 88 computers to several cities and counties within the state, including Sussex, under its U.S. Libraries Initiative. The foundation is working with 10 states this year, under a new Opportunity Online Hardware Grant Program, to help libraries replace and add computers in Colorado, Delaware, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Wyoming. Thirty-two states have been identified for the program through 2009.

Since receiving its first “Gates” computers, Delaware created a statewide program that pays 50 percent of the cost for libraries to replace their computers every three years, Fitzgerald said.

“It has helped us in the funding aspect,” she added, “because if libraries had to come up with 100 percent, they probably would not replace on a three-year cycle.”

Leveraging private-sector assets
St. Mary’s County is also getting “a couple of Gates grants,” Reif said. Grant recipients are required to use their money to leverage government and private-sector dollars and in-kind services.

Reif said several high-tech companies call her county home, attracted by Patuxent River Naval Air Station. One firm has adopted the library system and installed wireless Internet in all three branches.

“They put in the wi-fi, and they provided us with some laptops for people to use in the building and they continue to help us maintain it using their staff,” she said. “It’s lovely; I have this tech person that comes over and helps us, and I don’t have to write them a paycheck.”

The ALA study found that wireless Internet access is now available in about 54 percent of libraries, up from 36.7 percent last year and 17.9 percent in 2004. It’s a strategy many libraries are using to serve more patrons’ online needs.

For local governments’ part, Reif said it’s important that different departments within county government see the library “as their responsibility.” Such is the case in her county.

“The county’s IT department, when they worked with the commissioners several years ago to write the franchise agreement with the cable company, they insisted that the fiber be put up to each library building also, so we have huge bandwidth in this county.

“The running of the cable and retrofitting of buildings for electric, and so on, that’s done out of our county’s building services department, and that does not have to come out of my library budget.”

Some of the pressures placed on libraries are directly related to governments’ driving more patrons online — to access e-government services — and public and private sector employers’ increasing requirements that job applicants apply only online.

ALA’s Clark said libraries — in addition to their educational missions — are serving increasing numbers of the self-employed and small-business operators.

“A lot of the people we talked to in the library are almost running their business out of the library,” she said. “They’re researching grant opportunities; they’re doing market research, particularly in some of the smaller towns.” To that end, she says libraries “are really critical to their communities for job-seeking and economic development.”

For all those reasons, Reif said, it serves counties’ best interests to find new ways to support libraries.

“County leaders need to recognize that there are these wonderful missions that a public library can serve if they work in partnership with them,” she said, “and figure out, okay, we can’t come up dollars because the tax dollars are limited, but how can we provide some in-kind support? How can we juggle the expertise of the private sector?”

Clark concurs: “If a county elected official, for instance, was looking to make an impact in any of these areas, around jobs or economic development or education, the library may be the perfect partner.

“And with some investment of resources and some support, the county can take advantage of what’s already available in their community and actually make it stronger.”

For more information about the ALA study, visit www.ala.org/ala/ors/publiclibraryfundingtechnologyaccessstudy/0607report.htm.