Moving from big library issues to more focused ones:
I'd love to get Wizard's, and others', take on what can be done to help keep
the Internet area of Hosmer open longer hours.
This is one of the best resources in the system for helping to close the
Digital Divide but when I was in Hosmer last Saturday afternoon....when kids
without access at home could have been using it for school work, or parents
using it for training, it was closed.
A great room filled with all those computers in a neighborhood with some of
the city's lowest Internet penetration....closed in prime time.
If we can't keep this open on Saturday afternoons, I imagine it's even
harder to do it on evenings.
Any thoughts on what can be done? Would there be a union issue if some of
us with Internet contacts recruited volunteers for weekend training
sessions?
What about turning this over during hours when it isn't staffed to the
Neighborhood Technology Consortium?
(My pet cause; read about it at www.migizi.org)
There are huge budget issues swirling around the libraries right now but
it's important that we don't get solely focused on them that we let great
resources sit unusued.
R.T. Rybak
Washburn Library
