COVID-19 Intensifies Use of Libraries for Broadband, FCC Panel Hears
Libraries are increasingly taking on the role of filling gaps caused by a lack of broadband access, and the pandemic exacerbated the issue, said librarians, educators and digital access nonprofits during the FCC Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment’s virtual workshop Monday. Libraries lending mobile Wi-Fi hot spots to patrons is a “Band-Aid” for the larger issue of web access, said Lisa Shaw, workforce development specialist for the Maine State Library. “When you’re bleeding, you need a bandage, and we’re bleeding very heavily.”
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The event is part of an information gathering effort by the ACDDE’s Digital Empowerment and Inclusion Working Group to inform a future report and possible recommendations to the FCC. Librarians asked the FCC to improve rural connectivity, competition among ISPs and broadband maps. With accurate FCC mapping, “library staff would not have to do this,” said Arkansas River Valley Regional Library System Director Misty Hawkins, who said she used a 1982 bookmobile map to make plans to provide a mobile Wi-Fi beacon. “We are using our administration, we are doing this work for them.”
Funds that go to library programs shouldn’t include restrictions, said speakers. Money shouldn’t go only to programs that take place inside the library, said Hawkins. During the pandemic, the buildings aren’t open, she said. “We need to be able to go out into the communities, and we need the funding to be able to do this.”
With many jobs pivoting to digital, those without access are increasingly left behind, said Covington & Burling's Broderick Johnson, who chairs the Obama Foundation’s youth nonprofit My Brother’s Keeper Task Force. The pandemic led to an increase in people coming to the library to apply for jobs online for the first time in their lives, said Marian Christmon, Nashville Public Library digital inclusion manager.
Programs to provide access need to be advertised in non-digital media, rather than over social networks, said Shaw. “You have to meet people where they are,” said WG member and Verizon Associate General Counsel Roy Litland. The number of people who have access to broadband but don’t subscribe is five times larger than the number of those without access, said Comcast’s Rudy Brioche, who chairs the subgroup. There’s too much comfort with low levels of digital literacy, said Richard Reyes-Gavilan, executive director of the Washington, D.C., Public Library system.
Due to the pandemic's suspending schools, students are expected to experience an extra heavy version of the loss of knowledge that typically comes from not attending school over summer break, said Hispanic Heritage CEO Antonio Tijerino. This “summer slide” is already six months long instead of two, he said. Johnson said there’s concern lockdown isolation and dependency on digital interaction could affect the mental health of students even after the crisis.
"Hopefully, we can leverage all these different FCC programs" to attack the access problem, said Litland. Brioche said the WG will request further information from the panelists as it prepares its report.