Law & Disorder —

Educators, cable: more cash for public computer centers

With community colleges and libraries becoming the default public computer …

As everybody waits for the government to announce the winners in the first round of broadband stimulus grant awards, nine advocacy groups and a Time Warner Cable executive are calling for the Department of Commerce to boost the amount of funding available for public computer centers in round number two.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allocated $7.2 billion for broadband stimulus. A minimum of $200 million of that was set aside to expand public computer center capacity. "While this amount is certainly helpful, the first round of grant funding shows that $200 million is simply not enough," a letter to Larry Strickling of the Department of Commerce insists. Libraries and community colleges "have been unable to keep up with the general public’s demand for public access computers."

The plea is signed by ten organizations, including the American Library Association (ALA), the American Association of Community Colleges, the New America Foundation, and Fernando Laguarda, policy Vice President for Time Warner Cable.

R�sum� services

Libraries have become, almost by default, the predominant public computer centers in the United States. As the ALA report Job-Seeking in U.S. Public Libraries notes, nearly 71% of libraries in the US offer their communities the only source of free computer/Internet service in their area. Sixty-six percent of libraries now report helping job seekers as "critical" to their mission—a 22 percent rise from two years earlier. A New York Library Association survey found that 80 percent of member respondents had helped a patron look for work over the previous three months. "Two-thirds of New York libraries plan to offer online r�sum� and other database services," the report concluded.

Community colleges are also coming under tremendous pressure to beef up their Internet capacity as throngs of unemployed workers re-enroll to upgrade their skills. Most community colleges in the US have seen enrollment shoot up by from 10 to 30 percent while their state governments have cut education budgets.

The ARRA's allocation of broadband stimulus grants is being disbursed by the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce's National Telecommunications & Information Agency. The latter's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) is handing out the first round of grants to middle-mile infrastructure projects, "Sustainable Broadband Adoption" programs to stimulate high speed Internet use, and public computer centers.

Ten times greater

The lion's share of round one BTOP money is going to the middle-mile category, with only $50 million earmarked for computer centers. But NTIA noted in a survey of the applications it received that over 360 groups applied for public computer cash—a total of $1.9 billion in requests. "Stated differently," the ALA plea continues in emphatic bold type, "the total amount of dollars requested for the PCC program in the first round alone was almost 10 times greater than the minimum $200 million identified in the statute."

The problem, of course, is that Congress didn't allocate more broadband stimulus money than it did. So the letter suggests that BTOP take some of the funding that the government set aside for creating a national broadband inventory map and move it over to public computing. "The ARRA allocated a maximum of $350 million for broadband mapping," it notes, "but current projections show that NTIA will not need all of this funding to complete the broadband mapping functions."

It's unclear from where the ALA group derives those projections. And even with $150 million more in money for computer centers, the need for additional funding will be huge. But the letter certainly makes the case for more public computer center support.

As we've reported, the Department of Commerce has yet to announce most of the grants for round one of stimulus dispersal. The agency is still collecting feedback on how to set up the application process for round two, which presumably will begin sometime early next year.

10 Reader Comments

  1. We're absolutely seeing that trend. My company, OptimalResume.com, provides online career services software for organizations -- tools for building traditional career materials (resumes, cover letters) to more web 2.0 pieces (video resumes and websites).

    Until this year, we've primarily served college career centers. When the economy started crumbling, we were amazed at how many libraries came in search of our services. Our library clients have mushroomed from just a few to upwards of 30. Same goes for workforce investment boards. They're seeing a similar increase in the number of people coming through the doors.
    1 post | registered
  2. I certainly hope they'll make more money available for this purpose. Although colleges and libraries are certainly the largest provide of public computer access, don't forget about community technology centers like the Communities Connect Network in Washington state.
    6 posts | registered
  3. Either libraries are turning into cheap imitations of B&N and Borders, or they are turning into upscale libraries which let you "check out" the book permanently for a reasonable fee.

    I understand that access is supposed to be free, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to charge a small fee of 50c/day or $5-10/mo if someone wants to bring in their own laptop for access. It would certainly be cheaper than paying for access at home, and would help offset the costs for more bandwidth to the people who are adding extra load to the network.

    (stupid fragment sentences)
    2565 posts | registered
  4. quote:
    Originally posted by qchronod:
    Either libraries are turning into cheap imitations of B&N and Borders, or they are turning into upscale libraries which let you "check out" the book permanently for a reasonable fee.

    I understand that access is supposed to be free, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to charge a small fee of 50c/day or $5-10/mo if someone wants to bring in their own laptop for access. It would certainly be cheaper than paying for access at home, and would help offset the costs for more bandwidth to the people who are adding extra load to the network.

    (stupid fragment sentences)

    50c a day winds up being about 15$ a month, I could get internet for 10$ a month. I believe that we should be focusing on upgrading all of our network utilities to the point that bandwidth is extremely cheap/free, instead of focusing on specific groups. Work on the technology, then roll it out.
    29 posts | registered
  5. quote:
    Originally posted by qchronod:
    Either libraries are turning into cheap imitations of B&N and Borders, or they are turning into upscale libraries which let you "check out" the book permanently for a reasonable fee.

    I understand that access is supposed to be free, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to charge a small fee of 50c/day or $5-10/mo if someone wants to bring in their own laptop for access. It would certainly be cheaper than paying for access at home, and would help offset the costs for more bandwidth to the people who are adding extra load to the network.

    (stupid fragment sentences)


    You'd probably get more money if you started charging for book lending...or maybe make the 'loan' permanent, and start selling cappuccino and scones in the Cafe for extra money!

    Seriously, tax-supported public computing resources without direct usage charges are a good thing; charging job-seekers to access the tools for getting a job strikes me as likely to be counterproductive.
    5864 posts | registered
  6. quote:
    Originally posted by qchronod:
    charging job-seekers to access the tools for getting a job strikes me as likely to be counterproductive.


    Pretty sure that was only for people who brought their own lappy, not those using the library's own terminals.

    Anything other than entering the building and borrowing books should be fair game for fees. Internet should be free, too, but only to access resources that a library would normally carry (images, articles, books, etc.). Shopping, porn, and job hunting aren't what libraries are for (though the first two are all the computers at my library are used for).
    203 posts | registered
  7. quote:
    Originally posted by Treefingers:
    Shopping, porn, and job hunting aren't what libraries are for (though the first two are all the computers at my library are used for).


    On the contrary!

    I got my first job out of the military in 2003 by using the library's Internet terminals, and it was a perfectly acceptable use of said terminals, so stated by the public library at the terminal .

    That's probably the second best reason I can think of for a library to have free Internet terminals (the first being research, natch).
    3247 posts | registered
  8. quote:
    Originally posted by Treefingers:
    quote:
    Originally posted by qchronod:
    charging job-seekers to access the tools for getting a job strikes me as likely to be counterproductive.


    Pretty sure that was only for people who brought their own lappy, not those using the library's own terminals.

    Anything other than entering the building and borrowing books should be fair game for fees. Internet should be free, too, but only to access resources that a library would normally carry (images, articles, books, etc.). Shopping, porn, and job hunting aren't what libraries are for (though the first two are all the computers at my library are used for).


    You'd cut library costs even more if you could tell them to stop buying all those books on small business, writing a resume and other job-hunting-related subjects, art books with nekkid people in them, and the vast majority of the magazine rack. After all, shopping, porn, and job hunting aren't what libraries are for.

    I'd be interested in knowing what you think libraries are for, though.
    5864 posts | registered
  9. quote:
    Originally posted by hpsgrad:
    Seriously, tax-supported public computing resources without direct usage charges are a good thing; charging job-seekers to access the tools for getting a job strikes me as likely to be counterproductive.



    By that standard, spending $40k/year for 4 years of college education would be just as foolish. Instead, it's an investment; spending a few dollars for access to apply for jobs is the same thing.

    Libraries are looking for a handout because they're clinging to old "business models" in the face of changing technology. Giving them handouts only delays them from enacting the needed change. It doesn't help anyone.
    4247 posts | registered
  10. quote:
    Originally posted by Edzo:
    quote:
    Originally posted by hpsgrad:
    Seriously, tax-supported public computing resources without direct usage charges are a good thing; charging job-seekers to access the tools for getting a job strikes me as likely to be counterproductive.



    By that standard, spending $40k/year for 4 years of college education would be just as foolish. Instead, it's an investment; spending a few dollars for access to apply for jobs is the same thing.


    Charging people a fee to cover costs of education is reasonable (though I'm in favor of far more subsidies for education than you'll ever find in the USA). Charging people a fee to apply for any old job is stupid.

    Putting up obstacles for job seekers is, IMO, counter-productive. You clearly disagree. That you think that a college education is at all similar to a job application makes me think that we've gotten all the reasonable discussion out of the way, and I don't feel like an argument today, so I'll stop here.
    5864 posts | registered

You must to comment.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/12/colleges-libraries-and-time-warner-cable-call-for-more-cash-for-public-computer-centers/?comments=1
arstechnica.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-13
73306
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:72HNRRWM36HHROYPWASFWVECFQ4LB74X
<urn:uuid:52aa98ad-bf27-4bd8-b2e3-606a903d35d0>
2017-03-30T02:43:20Z
50.31.151.33
sha1:RXITDTRWBXOPOAUOOYU5FADLMZZ77JYT
<urn:uuid:fa89d311-809d-4b43-8ffc-055b4e478895>
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/12/colleges-libraries-and-time-warner-cable-call-for-more-cash-for-public-computer-centers/?comments=1
length
response
<urn:uuid:f6554705-bb32-45de-a23d-e78d6082ef75>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-13
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for March 2017
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf