Maine libraries lag in Internet access

Bangor Daily News Reports A national study funded by the Gates foundation found the average number of public access computer terminals in libraries nationwide was 10.4 in 2004, but in Maine only 17 of the 229 public libraries have 10 or more computers for public use. And the public demand to use the computers appears to be growing.

October 12, 2005 by Uncategorized 2

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2 Responses

  1. GregS* says:
    October 12, 2005 at 6:10 pm

    north of nowhere
    I’m from Mars Hill, ME about 10 minutes from the Canadian border. I don’t know what it is now but the population growing up was about 4,000. I graduated in a class of 50 students. And we were known as the big class. There is a public library but its not very big. 10 computers would be a lot. (And let’s not forget that maintenance of 10 computers is no small thing. Last I knew the librarian there wasn’t an MLS let alone a techie.) I’ve often thought that Aroostook County would benefit from a county style library system with large libraries spread up and down the county serving multiple communities. Mars Hill is mid-point between Houlton and Presque Isle and would make a good halfway marker.

    There’s also the fact that everything north of Bangor is snow covered 8 months out of the year. Nobody’s going outside unless they have to and a lot of people invest in home entertainment up there. Before Dish Network offered the small pieces of equipment they use it was pretty common to see those giant satellite dishes out on people’s lawns (cable wasn’t always easily available). I don’t see libraries up there as being the community centers as much as they are down here in Massachusetts.

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  2. Jessamyn says:
    October 12, 2005 at 10:20 pm

    Re:north of nowhere
    Have to agree there, the fact that a library doesn’t have ten computers means damn near nothing around here. I work with ten libraries in my area and none of them have more than four computers. However, none of them serves more than 4000 people population-wise which I bet is more comptuers per capita than many big city libraries. For a library that is open 16 hours a week, maintaining and administering just one computer is a fair amount of work.

    I get a bit tired of the Gates Foundation publishing these oogy-boogy studies. As much as I like what they’ve done for Vermont [many libraries here would have NO computers if it wasn’t for them] access to technology alone doesn’t solve digital divide problems. In fact it can sometimes exacerbate them because you drop a whole bunch of technology into a location where staff have no training or time, give them a few lessons and then leave [with no additional funding for tech staff in libraries with less than 3 FTEs and sometimes less than one] and all patrons learn is that computers are so hard to use that even the librarian can’t use them or fix them.

    Public access computing is important, but just raw access to technology isn’t the real problem we’re facing.

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