Libraries and the Ever-Widening Gap of the Digital Divide and Internet Access

(course journal entry assignment, December 2016)

As Deborah Fallows writes in her March 2016 Atlantic article, “The Library Card,” public libraries now offer a diversification of library services, including technology as one area ”where libraries function as vibrant centers of America’s towns”.

That public libraries were a destination for the free use of computers and internet access, were conclusions in the American Library Association’s national surveys over a decade ago; specifically, as noted on Public Library Use, ALA Library Fact Sheet 6, in the very first release of the annual State of America’s Libraries Report, in 2006, and in the very first release of the annual (but discontinued) Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding and Technology Access Study, in 2007. Government agencies as well as companies and business centers may have saved money and time by turning their pen-and-paper operations into online electronic processes — but it left the segment of the population without a computer at home behind, who found themselves with few other choices than to use their local libraries’ equipment and systems, to complete and send job applications, unemployment certifications, and social services benefits claim forms.

This “digital divide” population segment continues this many years later, if not so much in terms of not having computers than in not having internet access at home. And now it’s not just adults who must access the internet for needed services, it’s children who must access the internet just to finish their homework, as it is now only available online. Anton Troianovski pointed out this situation in the Wall Street Journal article dated January 28, 2013, The Web-Deprived Study at McDonald’s, in which after the schools and then the public libraries close, students still in need of internet access turn to the free Wi-Fi available at fast food restaurants, like McDonald’s, which don’t close until eleven p.m. or later.

Cheap smartphones and tablets have put Web-ready technology into more hands than ever. But the price of Internet connectivity hasn’t come down nearly as quickly. And in many rural areas, high-speed Internet through traditional phone lines simply isn’t available at any price. The result is a divide between families that have broadband constantly available on their home computers and phones, and those that have to plan their days around visits to…