Is Ubiquitous Wireless Coming?

Philadelphia mayor John F. Street recently appointed a committee to determine how Philadelphia might become the first large city in the United States to provide citywide wireless Internet access. While citywide Wi-Fi might still be a few years away, the initiative in Philadelphia—as well as smaller efforts to extend wireless acccess in Seattle, San Francisco, and Maryland's Eastern Shore—suggests an opportunity for the library. Still, libraries' roles in these plans vary, and it remains unresolved how much library content might be made available via a city's wireless network.

Elliot Shelkrot, director of the Free Library of Philadelphia, said the library was very pleased at the prospect of citywide Wi-Fi, but staff are still working on a paper on how it might affect library services. "Ubiquitous wireless would enable people to get into the catalog, into the databases, on a handheld," Shelkrot said, predicting an increase in usage.

At the end of November, the Wireless Philadelphia Executive Committee is scheduled to deliver its business, funding, and communications plans to Mayor Street. The committee estimates the cost at about $60,000 per square mile, or $7–$10 million for the city, and that the city would provide free access to all but charge for tiered service levels.

While the Free Library has no members on the wireless committee, the Seattle Public Library's Information Technology Department has been charged by the city to lead a plan for free wireless in four downtown parks. The budget for that awaits city council approval. The library IT director, Marilyn Sheck, said the plan is both a way to clean up the parks as well as provide a civic and business boost. "Because we already do public wireless in the library, the city will pay for additional bandwidth, but we would be the sort of [Internet service provider]," she said.

In the longer term, Mayor Greg Nickels has charged the Technology Council, which includes Sheck, the city's IT department, and representatives from city departments, to create a ubiquitous wireless plan. While the library won't be the lead agency, "we will be a significant involved party," Sheck said.

At the end of September, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom announced a plan to offer free wireless broadband Internet service in Union Square. Starting with this pilot, Newsom has charged the city's IT agency to work with city departments to develop a citywide wireless broadband policy. The next installation will be Civic Center, where the Main Library is located.

San Francisco Public Library spokeswoman Marcia Schneider noted, "With the anticipation that the cost of small laptops and PDAs will drop dramatically in the not-so-distant future, wireless access will vastly reduce the digital divide."

However, while the cost of connectivity might drop, the cost of high-end equipment won't, said Rick Weingarten, director of the American Library Association's (ALA) Office of Information Technology Policy. "You'd still need to go to a library because it has larger screens and more powerful computers to bring down the web pages you want to explore."

The expansion of wireless on campus has had varied impacts. At Vanderbilt University, Nashville, the business school requires students to have wireless-enabled laptops, said library technology officer Marshall Breeding. "The wireless network is the way they do business." Public workstations at the business school library are used mostly by visitors.

In Maryland, wireless has been used to provide broadband connectivity in the sparsely populated Eastern Shore, where it's not economically feasible to lay fiber or cable. Pat Wallace, assistant director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, which manages SAILOR, the state's public information network, said that the network has been able to leverage E-rate discounts to expand the bandwidth in the state, whatever the best path.