Libraries eye stimulus money for their Web access

— -- The libraries in Delaware County, Pa., are trying to shift into warp speed. The county is hooking eight branches to a fiber-optic network to help meet library patrons' ever-rising demand for high-bandwidth tasks like streaming educational videos and uploading online resumes.

Yet that still leaves 17 of the county's branches in the digital slow lane.

Jacking just the eight libraries into fiber lines is costing about $200,000 this year, a big chunk of the roughly $3 million budget that David Belanger, the county's director of public libraries, has to work with. So the other branches have to wait.

Belanger's situation is fairly typical, according to the American Library Association. That's where $7.2 billion in federal stimulus money for expanding broadband comes in — or so many libraries hope.

The library association is trying to convince the federal agencies in charge of doling out stimulus grants that libraries are the best way to extend high-speed service to the most people.

The group released a survey Tuesday in which nearly 60% of libraries said their Internet connections couldn't meet bandwidth demands at peak hours. At the same time, 70% said they are the only source of free Internet access in their communities.

"If the government's goal is to make sure everyone has access to broadband, the most fiscally responsible way to do that is attaching fiber to the libraries," said Emily Sheketoff, who heads the American Library Association's office in Washington. "By investing under $1 billion, you could hook up every public library in the country to high speed."

Whether that happens is, in part, up to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is working on criteria for judging grant applications under the stimulus package. NTIA spokesman Mark Tolbert said the agency could not comment on the specifics of the application process before the criteria are released this summer.

In a prepared statement, he said, "The ALA's opinion is very important and is part of the extensive input we've received from the public on how best to implement the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program."