Access in all areas


The introduction of free public-access computers has represented one of the biggest recent changes to public libraries. As well as offering general internet access to those without a home or work connection, they also helped to justify placing government services online.

Furthermore, over the last 18 months, English local authorities and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) have introduced online access to major reference works and a live-chat electronic research service.

But many of the computers on which these services rely were bought with a one-off, UK-wide lottery grant of £100m in 2002 and are now coming to the end of their four-year shelf life. It is now up to councils to pay for their maintenance and replacement. A new £80m lottery fund for libraries will pay for computer equipment only as part of the projects' widening community use.

Although the People's Network computers had to be free to use, a few libraries are introducing charges to help defray costs, which goes against the ethos of library services. "A library has to provide free access to the knowledge and imagination which is part of our culture, and that of the world's," says Guy Daines, head of policy for the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.

John Dolan, MLA head of library policy, agrees that free internet access has become a core library service.

The MLA's reference online deal has allowed most library authorities in England to purchase public access to reference works such as the Oxford English Dictionary and the live-chat, 24-hour-a-day Enquire service, which passes users' questions to librarians in the UK and the US. "It [the People's Network] has probably been the single biggest boost to overcoming the digital divide," says Dolan.

Although some councils are nervous about the cost, he adds that the computers have had millions of hours of use, bringing people into libraries: "No organisation would turn its back on that sort of demand," he argues.

· Enquire is available at www.peoplesnetwork.gov.uk. Reference Online through local authority websites.

· Any comments on this article? Write to society@theguardian.com
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/nov/01/epublic.technology
www.theguardian.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-04
369108
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:GZ5CYYEBYBYN3T5XE53MX3CRTNGWBCRW
<urn:uuid:97a3dc8e-d2a9-44c1-8c14-7db5ea338241>
2017-01-18T20:26:53Z
151.101.32.67
sha1:THQHOBOFCXR7ZFMGEGBKX4VN4ZX7HSL3
<urn:uuid:bb014a2b-0269-466a-a169-5b322cb1bd52>
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/nov/01/epublic.technology
response
<urn:uuid:0e6b48e4-44be-4298-a8f2-efb0c60b4b62>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-04
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for January 2017
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf