April 22, 2004

Libraries Wired, and Reborn

Be you a library , an oil company or a law office - using technology as a tool to grow your business, satisfy your customers and do more with less is so important. The NY Times has an extensive piece about how libraries are using technology.

Today, the Terrebonne Parish main library is a year-old spacious postmodern building of red brick and skylights, built on a former sugar cane plantation. There are 81 computers linked to the Internet, all with high-speed connections, in the parish libraries. Three of the closed branches have been reopened.

Technology, to be sure, is only part of the story. The arrival of the first few dozen Internet-connected computers in 1998 - courtesy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - brought people in and helped revive community interest in the libraries. Local leaders saw an opportunity and ran with it. They put a one-quarter-cent sales tax on the ballot for the parish libraries, a proposal that narrowly passed in 1998. That provided the funds for the new library, 81 computers, more staffing and a 10-fold increase in the annual book budget.

"Before we had the Internet and this building, the library was not considered a winner," said Mary Cosper LeBoeuf, the head librarian. "But now it is." (full story)

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