Technology

Most libraries don’t own their own ebooks. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to LJ readers, yet it’s a statement that continues to confound elected officials and administrators who get an astounding amount of say in how much money public and academic libraries are allotted. This is one of the reasons I, along with my coauthors Sarah Lamdan, Michael Weinberg, and Jason Schultz at the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at New York University Law, published our recent report, The Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy: How Publishers and Platforms Have Reshaped the Way We Read in the Digital Age. 

The Georgia Public Library Service (GPLS) has distributed more than 7,000 Chromebooks and 2,800 Launchpad tablets to libraries throughout the state with the help of $2.3 million provided by the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund via the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) in September announced that Pottsboro Library in Texas was one of 18 organizations that will be part of the National Digital Navigator Corps. Supported by a $10 million investment from Google.org, the new program will enable institutions serving rural and Tribal communities to hire, train, and support a digital navigator to help residents of those communities gain access to the internet, devices, and digital skills training.

The Las Vegas–Clark County Library District, in partnership with the Nevada Homeless Alliance and the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth, this spring launched a successful cell phone lending program to provide smartphones to people experiencing homelessness.

Georgia’s Clayton County Library System has launched a new job training program that enables patrons to use virtual reality (VR) headsets to simulate hands-on experiences in various trades including plumbing, commercial and residential HVAC, and even solar panel installation.

Charlotte Mecklenburg Library (CML), NC, in March 2022 will begin distributing 20,000 free, refurbished laptops to Mecklenburg County adults who do not have their own home computers through its MeckTech Computer Kit Program. Separately, this month CML began rolling out MeckTech Connect, a pilot program that will provide free broadband internet service to about 800 households in Charlotte’s West Boulevard Corridor.

UPDATE: On December 9, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), filed suit against the Maryland Attorney General seeking to overturn House Bill 518/(SB432). The law requires publishers to offer "electronic literary product" licenses to Maryland libraries “on reasonable terms,” and prohibits publishers from instituting embargo periods during which ebook and electronic audiobook licenses are available for sale to the public but not to libraries.

The latest report from Ithaka S+R, “Big Data Infrastructure at the Crossroads,” released December 1, offers critical findings and recommendations on the ways higher ed researchers, scholars, and technicians can partner with university and college librarians to support data research. The report was built from quantitative results and interview transcripts produced by a cohort of librarians at each participating institution.

When we talk about web usability, we are talking directly about our patron’s experiences in a library’s digital space, so rethinking how we do this work through the lens of antiracism is important.