Jeff's Community Informatics Projects

Discovery

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A number of important discoveries became evident after substantial data analysis.  This section reviews 4 major sets of findings: supported library availability, computer resources, state-wide comparisons, library policies, and the overall opportunity offered by a given library.  Comparisons are made between counties, individual libraries, and significantly and predominantly African American communities.

First and foremost was the number of hours per week each library was available.  Obviously the more often a library is open, the more opportunity it offers to patrons wishing to increase their exposure to and use of information technology.  To truly assess the value of open hours to patrons, however, one must gauge their relative worth to target populations.  Those with steady 9-5 jobs might appreciate a library that’s open on the weekends, whereas a single mother working 2 jobs, one night shift and a waitressing gig on the weekends, could easily value a library open during the day.  Another parent might value a library that’s open after school so their kids can work on homework on the computers. Some patrons might just look for an open computer, whereas others, perhaps say elderly users, would seek assistance from a free librarian.  An aspiring entrepreneur might require the help of a computer expert librarian to make a website for their new business while another could need help tracking down their family history in online archives.  Though it may be difficult to measure, the more a library is open the more likely it is to hit crucial valuable times for patrons.  Furthermore, the type of staff available at the library (those who can help with computers) also determine the relative value of a given library.  As it turns out there is a significant gap between rural libraries and those from the mixed locale sets:

County	Hours/Week	Total Staff	Staff Member : General Population	# of staff who are computer experts	# of staff moderately familiar with computers
Peoria	47.6	13.2	1:1292	2.2	4.2
St. Clair	43.8	5.7	1: 2839	0.7	3.2
Champaign	61.4	48.2	1:541	5.2	12.8
Alexander-Pulaski	24	1.2	1:1550	0	0.8
Significant	44.8	22.3	1:1207	2.6	6.5
Predominant	43.3	8.8	1: 2162	1.1	3.3
Sample Ave	44.2	16.5	1: 1698	2.0	5.1

Figure 4.1 – Opportunity for access, in terms of hours and support.  Mean averages.

Clearly the time a library is open relates to the total number of staff available as one person can only work so much.  This gives larger libraries a significant advantage when offering computer-related services.  There does not seem to be any difference between the ratio of librarians to potential patrons based on locale, however.  As the data show, the rural libraries in this sample are open less often, and have fewer staff who can help users with computers or work to keep them maintained.  The libraries in the St. Clair area appear to be largely understaffed because their librarian to population ratio is much higher than average.  These numbers also likely relate to wealth, as the poorest areas have the fewest number of available computer experts. 
The results can also be compared in regards to significant and predominant African American communities. Take a look at the orange and blue rows at the bottom of the table.As you can see, predominantly African American communities suffer in just about every category.  Their libraries are open a slightly less per week, have fewer staff, and have a worse staff member to population ratio.  That being said, in this data set the average population served for the predominantly African American libraries was much smaller, 8501, as compared to significant African American community libraries, which on average served 14,644 people.  If one were to keep the staff to population ratio constant, and doubled the staff size of the libraries serving predominantly African American populations then the expert and moderately familiar staff would be nearly equal.  This suggests that the larger variable at play is library size (and therefore location: rural vs. small-town/city).
Just having an expert or two on the staff doesn’t assure that they’re around very often, however, though it may be a good predictor.  We will return to this inquiry later in the report.

The old center point of the digital divide is not irrelevant, by any means.  Once one arrives at a library the available computer and internet resources become a primary (and likely foremost) mediating factor.  A visitor seeking to use the computers may not be the only one, and as such the number of visitors who use the computers daily, as well as the number of computers themselves, become a good predictor of availability.  Newer computers, in general, offer a greater array of capabilities and benefits.  Thus the newer the machines available, the greater propensity for sufficient access.  Again results were measured by county and community type:

County / Community Type	Ave computer users per day	Total number of computers*	User to computer ratio	Population to computer ratio	Ave Computer Age
Peoria	50.4	11.2	5.4	932	1.4
St. Clair	38	8.3	4.7	1156	2.0
Champaign	124	29	5.3	1052	2.3
Alexander -Pulaski	10	4	2.5	526	4.9
Significant	67.6	16.3	4.4	971	3.2
Predominant	37.6	8.3	4.7	954	2.1
Sample Ave	55.6	12.9	4.5	964	2.9
*This number restricted to functioning general use computers (non-card-catalog machines)

Figure 4.2 – An overview of computer resources focused on traffic and availability as well as workstation age (and therefore a mediocre measure of its capabilities).

Not surprisingly, small town/city areas, as compared to rural areas, generally have more users per day who use their computers, as well as more computers in general.  The user to computer and population to computer ratios are better, however, in more rural areas.  Rural areas are also more likely to field older machines, with an average age double or triple that of other areas.  Interestingly enough the predominantly African American communities were more likely to have newer machines.  This may suggest recent emphasis on or increased grants for these populations.  Again the averages for users and computers for predominant communities are half those of significant communities, but so are their populations, thus it can be reasonably concluded that there are no significant differences here.

Internet access is another important facet to physical access.  The survey assessed connection speed, availability of wireless, and wireless coverage, as well as if a library had any plans to add wireless in the future.  As previously mentioned, the speed of a connection severely shapes the kind of actions one can take on the internet.  If library computers do not allow users to save files or install their own programs then wireless also becomes important, as users can do these sorts of things on their own laptops and cell phones.  Wireless coverage was rated on a sliding scale: (1) for a little coverage, (2) for some coverage, and (3) for complete coverage and outside.  Internet speed was rated on a user-response basis, rated as sufficient speed (1) never, (2) sometimes, and (3) always.  For convenience, both locale and community-type were combined in one table:

County/Community Type	% w/ Wireless	Wireless coverage	Sufficient speed	Plans to add wireless
Peoria	80%	2.8 (nearly complete)	2.4 (sometimes)	0%
St. Clair	30%	3.0 (complete)	2.0 (sometimes)	20%
Champaign	80%	2.8 (nearly complete)	2.8 (always)	40%
Alexander -Pulaski	0%	0 (none)	1.6 (rarely)	20%
Significant	40%	2.8 (nearly complete)	2.1 (sometimes)	30%
Predominant	60%	2.8 (nearly complete)	2.3 (sometimes)	10%
Sample Ave	48%	2.8 (nearly complete)	2.2 (sometimes)	19%

Figure 4.3 – Libraries with wireless, the coverage it gives if present, the speed the internet (overall, includes both wireless and ground-lines) provides, and plans for future wireless.

None of the rural areas (Alexander-Pulaski) surveyed featured wireless at their libraries.  St. Clair county was also lacking in wireless at most of their library locations.  Those libraries that had wireless coverage generally had most or their entire library covered, however.  Interestingly enough, Champaign county was the only one with a high interest in increasing its wireless, the Urbana-Free Library even intended to add another access point for better coverage.  Cairo was the only library in the rural areas that planned to add wireless, and this need was most based on the high interest in usage by those stopping by traveling down the Mississippi river.  Speed was typically sufficient in small-town and small city areas.  Nearly every rural location was confined to dial-up, and expressed an interest in better speeds, which would also allow them to install wireless.  Access to broadband is limited in many of these areas, Cairo for instance, was planning on installing a satellite-based access provision system.  The differences between significant and predominantly African American communities were relatively small.  Predominant areas had a higher rate of wireless provision and expressed less interest in adding it in the near future, which the latter half of makes sense and the former seems to suggest different priorities.  Perhaps some of these libraries received funding for internet provision more recently, and thus skipped out on running Ethernet cable and wired everything in wirelessly, thus saving money and keeping up to date.