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Libraries Wired, and Reborn

Posted by TimSlavin at April 22, 2004

"The low point came in 1997, a year before personal computers and the Internet came to the libraries of Terrebonne Parish, a swatch of bayou country in South Louisiana, where people make their living on the water, harvesting shrimp and crabs or servicing oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Four of the nine branch libraries had been shut down for lack of funds, and the main library, a dreary concrete-slab building that locals nicknamed "the bomb shelter," needed repairs and books.

Today, the Terrebonne Parish main library is a year-old spacious postmodern building of red brick and skylights, built on a former sugar cane plantation. There are 81 computers linked to the Internet, all with high-speed connections, in the parish libraries. Three of the closed branches have been reopened."

From The New York Times (free registration required). Nice plug for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Includes lots of data on the impact of the internet on US public libraries. In the US, at least, libraries are a major internet access point for people who cannot afford monthly access.

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