Digital Equity Engagement

2023 NACo Achievement Award Winner

Cook County, Ill., IL

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About the Program

Category: Libraries (Best in Category)

Year: 2023

COVID-19 crisis has shown that access to digital technology is critical and underscores the need to provide access to technology not just for the sake of access to justice but to technology. Thereby, our venue is seeking to bridge the digital divide by providing access to cultivate and sustain the reliance interest with the legal community in equitable access to the community, self-represented litigants (SRLs), and the vulnerable members of the community who have few alternatives. Prioritizing digital materials and electronic services while adapting in creative ways to provide sustainable action to advance digital equity which has become a core function for our service institution, i.e., library. During a time when most libraries have not been open to the public, our library has sought to sustain access with utilitarian objectives to help mitigate technology desert challenges that are even more profound amidst the pandemic. Cook County Law Library (CCLL) has been able to achieve a solid level of consistency, i.e., access efficacy even when shared public terminal access environment was initiated in the third quarter of 2019 and was implemented in 2020, i.e., sustained from January 2020 through March 2020 and augmented July 2020 through the present.

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