In 1997, Bill and Melinda Gates created the Gates Library Foundation, with the goal of making sure that all people have access to computers and the Internet through public libraries. (In 2000, the Library Foundation merged with the William H. Gates Foundation to become the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.)
The Library Foundation grew out of Libraries Online, an 18-month pilot project operated by Microsoft in partnership with the American Library Association. Libraries Online helped about 200 libraries in low-income areas across the country launch public access computing programs. The results were so encouraging that Bill and Melinda decided to expand the project and make it a focus of their philanthropy. “We realized we could do this with thousands and thousands of libraries and ensure that children and adults have an access point to technology whether they have a computer or not,” said foundation chairwoman and president, Patty Stonesifer (now CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).
Installation, Training, and Technical Support
Unlike our other programs, the U.S. Library Program started as an operational effort, which means we ran the program ourselves and implemented it on the ground, with a lot of help from state agencies and other partners. We drew up state-by-state plans to work with all libraries in areas where the poverty rate was 10 percent or higher, which turned out to amount to almost 11,000 libraries. Then we solicited proposals from eligible library systems and used the information we gathered to tailor our plans to each library’s needs.
We provided three primary services:
- Installation: Our teams traveled from library to library installing computers that we designed especially for the program. Gateway provided the hardware, Microsoft provided the software, and we developed a standard configuration appropriate for heavy use in a public setting. This package reduced computer-security and maintenance concerns for libraries and made it possible to offer training and technical support to all program participants. Libraries that didn’t want the standard package could opt for cash grants to buy their own hardware and software.
- Training: Between 10 and 50 trainers were in the field at any given time, helping librarians learn how to use computers and the Internet and how to help their patrons do the same. Librarians from larger systems also attended joint trainings at our offices in Seattle to learn how to maintain public access computing labs and develop their own staff- and patron-training programs.
- Technical Support: We operated a call center in Seattle that handled technical-support requests from participating libraries. In the program’s early phases, we offered this service to each library for three years; in the later phases, we offered one year of technical support as we looked for more sustainable methods of providing the service.
Learning From a Slow Start
We began the program in Alabama in December 1997, and it took much longer than we’d expected to install computers and train staff in about 250 libraries there. In fact, Bill and Melinda traveled to Alabama to celebrate the program in February 1998, when the work was scheduled to be done, but their visit was premature: We didn’t finish until June.
The biggest problem was that we didn’t understand how important it would be to prepare libraries for installation. We instructed librarians to have their Internet connections and computer networks ready on a certain day, but we didn’t give them the support they needed to get it done. As a result, in future states, we focused more on consulting and communicating with librarians and state library agencies beforehand, and the work went more smoothly.
Because we had trainers in the field getting consant feedback from librarians, we were able to make a number of improvements during the course of the program. For example, many larger, urban library systems were already running their own public access computing programs, and our pre-packaged library computer didn’t always fit their specifications. Consequently, we began giving these systems cash grants to help them improve pre-existing public access programs.
We also learned that our original training manuals were too dense for patrons to use easily. As a result, we rewrote them and produced a series of “Quick Guides” to accommodate those with different skill levels.
The Challenge of Sustaining Progress
By 2002, when the program was nearing completion, we understood the pressing need to give libraries access to training and technical support after the program ended. We knew we could no longer offer these services, but we understood they would be absolutely critical to the long-term success of the program. As a result, we gave a grant to the Online Computer Learning Center to build WebJunction, an online community where librarians can share knowledge and get technical support. WebJunction has since become an integral part of our strategy to help libraries sustain their public access computing programs.
When the program finished in 2003, we had granted more than 47,000 computers to about 11,000 libraries—more than two-thirds of the libraries in the United States—in low-income areas. We then shifted our focus to helping these libraries sustain public access computing. Achieving this goal has been a much bigger challenge than we expected, especially in the thousands of rural libraries that operate on tiny budgets and often serve the disadvantaged populations that need public access the most.
Next: Results