Libraries dying for bandwidth—where's the fiber (and cash)?

Most of America's libraries make it a part of their mission to offer Internet access to anyone in the community, but a severe bandwidth crunch is hobbling those efforts. That's one of the conclusions reached by the American Library Association, which says that 59.6 percent of American libraries "report their connectivity speed is inadequate some or all of the time to meet patrons' needs." One of the problems is funding; in a recession, and especially a recession where housing prices (and therefore property taxes) are dropping in many communities, it can be hard to scrape the cash together for a library bandwidth upgrade. But another problem is simple availability. As the ALA's filing with the Federal Communications Commission points out, "moving from a 56Kbps circuit to 1.5Mbps is one thing. Moving from 1.5Mbps to 20Mbps or to 100Mbps or even to a gigabit—depending on the size and need of the library—is another." Even when they can pay for it, many libraries are finding that higher speeds simply aren't available.