Getting online to complete a school assignment, to fill out a job application, or just to surf the Web isn’t easy for the sizable portion of the US population that remains on the wrong side of the digital divide. “It’s not unusual to see people sitting on the library steps, using Wi-Fi that bleeds outside the building,” says Luke Swarthout, director of adult education services for the New York Public Library.
To expand broadband access, an experiment in library lending is under way that will allow people to check out a Wi-Fi hotspot and take it home. In New York City and in Chicago, library patrons will soon be able to borrow a handheld wireless router in the same way that they might borrow a book. “Instead of plugging into your wall to get cable [broadband service], this router pulls a cellular signal just as your cell phone does,” Swarthout explains. The device rebroadcasts that signal, turning any location into a hotspot. The hotspot lending program in New York began on a small scale last spring and will ramp up in early 2015. A pilot version of the program in Chicago will start in January.
These projects are the latest examples of how public libraries are innovating to stay relevant in the digital age. The program in New York, called Check Out the Internet, and the one in Chicago, called Internet to Go, each won a Knight News Challenge award in 2014 from the Knight Foundation. Both programs stood out among challenge participants because they combine Internet access with resources that “allow more people to participate and create online,” says John Bracken, director of journalism and media innovation at the Knight Foundation.
Chicago Public Library, for example, provides a wide range of technology instruction and access to digital tools. Beginners can receive one-toone coaching in computer and Internet basics. More-advanced users can take classes in programming, 3D modeling, and digital manufacturing. They can even access fabrication labs that include milling machines, laser cutters, and 3D printers.
“We want to serve the whole continuum, and it all starts with access,” says Brian Bannon, commissioner of the Chicago Public Library. Last year, he estimates, Chicago Public Library provided nearly 3 million computer sessions across its 80 branches. “We know how to lend stuff,” Bannon says. “We’re already the largest provider of free Internet access in the city. We want to use our lending ability to make a difference in the on-ramping of digital skills.” The role of the library is especially important in low-income neighborhoods, where as few as 30 percent of households have a broadband Internet connection. (Overall, an estimated 70 percent of US adults have high-speed broadband access at home, according to the Pew Research Center.)
A similar story is unfolding in New York. Classes offered by the city’s library system cover everything from navigating the Web to computer coding. Patrons who take massive open online courses (MOOCs) through Coursera can meet at the main library in Manhattan for face-to-face discussion groups. “Public libraries are places where, at all levels of technology fluency, people can improve their knowledge,” Swarthout says. “It’s part of our natural evolution to push forward innovation.”
Details of the hotspot lending program vary between the two cities. Patrons in New York will be able to check out a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to one year. In Chicago, the lending time will be three weeks, and neighborhood branches will offer beefed-up tech support. In both cities, meanwhile, librarians will be monitoring usage patterns closely. “We want to do rapid prototyping and to understand demand,” Bannon says. “Once people take this [device] home and play with it, will they then connect to free or low-cost broadband programs on their own?”
Twenty years ago, Bannon worked on a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative that aimed to get all US libraries online. “Overnight, that program added a new service to libraries,” he recalls. The hotspot lending initiative will extend that approach to create a suite of “wraparound services that help people integrate technology into their lives,” Bannon says. The mission of the public library hasn’t changed, he argues, since Benjamin Franklin imagined that institution as a way “to connect people to the leading ideas of the day and to build a stronger, more democratic society.”
Read more stories by Suzie Boss.