Blog Response

What astonished me was how research shows the Clinton administration predicted that because the farm economy of rural America would transfer into the mercantile economy of the 21st Century by the 1990’s. The internet was a necessary ingredient for supporting this new economy. . The industrial factories of urban America has already become gentrified service industries that reflect this new information revolution This falls in line with Prof. Whitmire’s statement about how small cottage industries ar e competing on internet band widths with libraries, schools, and students. Her statement concurs with Bertot’s reading about how bandwidth and free wireless access affect usage statistics.

Using Public Libraries to Provide Technology Access for Individuals in Poverty: A Nationwide Analysis of Library Market Areas Using a Geographic Information System reports that library internet access and transportation access to libraries in low income areas increases the economic vitality of a community. Libraries as third places provide telecommunications where Internet access is becoming an increasingly important information source for American society for personal correspondence via e-mail, up-to-the-minute news, online shopping, information search and retrieval, and product information.
While this same study agrees with Prof. Whitmires findings about the rural and urban poor as well as rural and central city minorities. It did not dawn on me that rural/urban young poor households, and female-headed poor households were among the low income groups to be “least connected” because of work/home time constraints in underpaid/low-skilled jobs with transportation access barriers to and from the library. I cite this statistic because these citizens are the most vulnerable members of society (National Telecommunications and Information Administration, 1998).

I did my study on New York City libraries vs. Town of Woodstock libraries. I remember the Woodstock library as a quaint place out of a Faulkner novel. However, research shows that another library formed to serve the upper class citizens of new housing in the area. The New Woodstock Library, while in the same service area, is separate from the Town of Woodstock library. a WDST radio announcer told me over the phone that the new library was a semi-public environment that commandeered funds from the historical library whose residents ‘lived on the wrong side of the tracks.’ Online statistics reveal it is a small library serving less then 900 people with a ¾ staff member.

Anyway, these are the stats for New York City Library vs. Town of Woodstock Library.

Woodstock, New York:

Wikipedia Demographics:
2000 Census: Population; 6,241 people, 2,946 households, and 1,626 families. The poulation density is 92.5 people per square mile. There are 3,847 housing units in an average density of 57.0sq/mi. The racial makeup of the town is 94.25 percent white, 1.30 perecent black, 0.21 percent native american, 1.57 percent asian, and 0.02 percent pacific islander. Hispanics are 2.56 perecent of the population.



Median Income;
The average household income is $49,217. About 10.2 percent of the population live below the poverty line in 2000. City-data.com reports that 11.4 percent of residents lived below the poverty line in 2007. The majority of poor residents are white female headed households according to their survey. Thirty-seven percent of these households are the working poor. The poverty rate for high school graduates is 16 percent compared to 85.2 percent poverty rate for high school dropouts.

Woodstock Public Library District:
(Resource: nces.ed.gov)

the district has only one library which serves 6,241 members in its service area. the library has 9 public internet terminals and one for the librarian. The number of people using the computers in 2005 was 12,792 according to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. I could not determine their broadband type. the library has a total staff of 5.69 with 1.75 being accredited librarians. The total expenditures totals $433,280. Most of that comes from local taxes. The library has a book and serial volume collection of 53,400.

The library had a total of 165,299 visits in 2005. Total circulation for the year was 72,028 with 26,705 reference transactions. Circulation of children’s materials totaled 14,124 with 3,444 children attending events. Average hours open was 41.5 per week. 151,056 visits to the library were made in 2005

New York Public Library:

While New York State averages 9 terminals per library, New York City averages 26 terminals per library. Population of the legal service area is 3,313,573 people.
4,925,870 requested the use of computers in 2005. Average hours open is 37 hours a week. 15,181,566 visits were made to the library in 2005.

New York City has a high degree of income disparity. In 2005 the median household income in the wealthiest census tract was $188,697, while in the poorest it was $9,320. Almost 21.2 percent of residents live in poverty. According to the most recent U.S. Census data, in 2006 there were a total of 3.3 million low-income New Yorkers – a number greater than the population of Chicago – totaling 42 percent of the city's population living at or below the poverty level.

New York has 87 branch libraries serving a legal service area population of 3,313,573 people. White persons make up 44.7% of the population. Black persons make up 26.6% of the population. American Indian and Alaska Native persons make up 0.5%, and
Asian persons 9.8 percent. Hispanics or and Latinos comprise almost 27 percent of the city’s population.

The system has over 20 million books and serial volumes. Almost 14 million visits were made to the library in 2005. The system has 3.6 million types of children’s materials while 246,166 children attended library activities.