Access issues and the evolving cloud.

  == Information access for all, adequate bandwidth/wireless/mobile connectivity and the 'digital divide'.==

I read these two articles for this post:

Bertot, J. C., Jaeger, P. T., McClure, C. R., Wright, C. B., & Jensen, E. (2009). Public libraries and the Internet 2008-2009: Issues, implications, and challenges. First Monday, 14(11). Available http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2700/2351

and

Nelson, M. R. (2009). Building an open cloud [Cloud computing as platform]. Science, 324(5935), 1656-1657. 

These two articles have different perspectives on accessing the internet. Bertot's exploration of the access for all debate comes from the expectation that is placed upon public libraries by customers and the government to deliver e-services. The demand for access to e-services via the internet continues to increase. 

Since the GFC some public libraries in the US have struggled to keep service standards the same. As budgets have contracted the ability to provision of contact hours, failure of infrastructure to keep up with demand and government's reliance electronic services has placed added burden on public libraries.

While this may not seem such an issue in affluent city areas. The problems with having sufficient time to look for work, maintain electronic contact with family or friends, accessing government information in poor urban or rural areas via the internet has been exacerbated.  Most libraries in this study group reported that they do not have enough computer terminals to services their needs, the connection is slow due to insufficient bandwidth and frequently the customers alloted time is inadequate for their needs.

Nelson points out that as technology evolves more computing services will migrate from our desktops to the internet's cloud.   There are three scenarios that he forsees that may happen, a) many clouds - the lack of government policy has made it possible for silos of data to exist tied to specific platforms without any interoperability; b) data has the ability to migrate from cloud to cloud but not with its software and c) both data and software are interchangable between cloud hosts.

I can see that as this technology evolves it will place even greater demand on public libraries for access to internet services. This is because we are moving from an internet of things to an internet of everything. We as public librarians have a duty to be advocates for our customers. We can lobby governments so that they are better informed about technology trends and issues. Hopefully to better resource our libraries better but also promote policies that encourage further democratisation of internet services such as cloud storage. 

Got any comments?