In more ways than one, really. I am not talking about bran muffins, I am talking about fiber optic cable in this case, although if you are eating something with whole grains right now, more power to you! Anyway, the library system where I worked prior to the wonderful Hutchinson Public Library was part of a county government. To their credit, they realized that as their county grew and data demand soared they needed a solution that would get them ahead of the curve. So about 5 years ago in 2004-5, they started building their own 100Mb (megabit) fiber network. For comparison, the average home connection speed in Kansas in 2009 was 4.9Mb, not quite 1/20th of what they built. So this was a pretty progressive and aggressive plan at the time. In fact, when I left that library system the slowest connection in the county system was the 10Mb pipe to the Internet.
Why am I carrying on about data and pipes and megabits? Because of this article. The National Broadband Plan could wire "anchor institutions" such as schools, community centers, colleges and libraries such as good ol' HPL, with 1Gb fiber connections. A gigabit represents 1 billion bits or 1,000 megabits. In other words, this FCC proposal would create connection points in communities 10 times faster than the network my old employers built. The implications are enormous. A plan of this type could leapfrog the US back into the top tier of nations in the area of Internet connection speed. Since we currently rank 28th in the world, I think this plan is worth attempting on the basis of lowering our international "Embarrassment-to-Prestige Ratio" alone.
More importantly, it could create the possibility in virtually every rural town for solid, high-speed Internet access. This quote, from the ArsTechnica article above sums it up for me: Bob Bocher, who works as a consultant with the Wisconsin State Library, says, "The more than 16,000 public libraries across the country are often the only places in their communities that offer no-fee Internet access to all residents.
This is certainly the case, for better or worse, at HPL. As our bandwidth needs have grown, an ever-larger chunk of our limited funds have gone toward maintaining a tolerable usability level connecting to the Internet and the library's many paid digital services. So I am excited about this change. I wonder if the funding will be found to make it a reality?
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The HPL 2010 Project and Ebooks
Typically around this time of year, HPL sponsors a huge number of programs. This surge in program offerings seems to come from two directions; our own surge in energy following the sometimes-exhausting holiday season, and an urge to try some new ideas.
The HPL 2010 Project is one of those new ideas. We are now past the mid-point in this experiment in self-paced technology training. Hundreds of patrons and dozens of HPL staff members have learned about RSS feeds, streaming music, online TV, online newspapers and book reviews, cool library tools, with much more to come.
The responses to this project have been so overwhelmingly positive that I think we will adapt the concept of The 2010 Project for future uses and maybe offer it as an ongoing self-paced teaching tool.
And now a word about ebooks (because I can't help myself). We receive a variety of questions about ebooks here at HPL. Most of them revolve around the basic, 'Do you have any?" the answer to that is, at this point, "precious few". We have access to more through the State Library's download site, but as is the case with all new formats, it takes awhile to build what one might consider a 'good" collection. That's not a cop-out, it is simply a function of having the money to do it or not. One of our considerations is what will become the "standard" so that we don't buy a bunch of titles that are incompatible with the majority of readers. I read lots about this, having set up a Google news custom section for this topic. Recently a great article came up that I would like to recommend. It sums up the current state format standards (or lack thereof) much better than I could do it.
OK, that's enough rambling. Back to worrying about roof leaks and budgets...sigh.
The HPL 2010 Project is one of those new ideas. We are now past the mid-point in this experiment in self-paced technology training. Hundreds of patrons and dozens of HPL staff members have learned about RSS feeds, streaming music, online TV, online newspapers and book reviews, cool library tools, with much more to come.
The responses to this project have been so overwhelmingly positive that I think we will adapt the concept of The 2010 Project for future uses and maybe offer it as an ongoing self-paced teaching tool.
And now a word about ebooks (because I can't help myself). We receive a variety of questions about ebooks here at HPL. Most of them revolve around the basic, 'Do you have any?" the answer to that is, at this point, "precious few". We have access to more through the State Library's download site, but as is the case with all new formats, it takes awhile to build what one might consider a 'good" collection. That's not a cop-out, it is simply a function of having the money to do it or not. One of our considerations is what will become the "standard" so that we don't buy a bunch of titles that are incompatible with the majority of readers. I read lots about this, having set up a Google news custom section for this topic. Recently a great article came up that I would like to recommend. It sums up the current state format standards (or lack thereof) much better than I could do it.
OK, that's enough rambling. Back to worrying about roof leaks and budgets...sigh.
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