Latest ALA/NCLIS Study Shows 60% of Public Libraries Offer Net Access
Staff -- Library Journal, 1/11/1998
More than 60 percent of public libraries now offer access to the Internet--up from 21 percent in 1994, says the most recent study conducted jointly by the American Library Association (ALA) and the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. The information was released at ALA's Midwinter Meeting in New Orleans. However, public library systems have been less successful at integrating the Internet in their branch installations, with only 13 percent reporting web access at some or all of their branches. The study involved 1,700 of the country's more than 8,900 public libraries, and found that they spent an estimated $280 million in Internet access costs in 1997.
