Alabama Libraries Offer Webcam Services to Military Families
Lynn Blumenstein -- Library Journal, 01/11/2009
- Computers enhance contact with personnel overeas
- Only military families can reserve time
- Soldiers had better broadband than families back home
The Alabama Public Library Service (APLS) and Gov. Bob Riley are teaming up on the Connecting Families Project, which puts computers with broadband capabilities in public libraries across the state to allow the families of military personnel overseas to communicate more easily. Using about $187,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, APLS, working with local public libraries, is installing computers with webcams in 106 locations.
Although anyone may use the webcam computers, only military families are able to reserve time by appointment. APLS director Rebecca Mitchell said additional libraries could receive the equipment at a later date. First-round participants include libraries in all but one of Alabama’s 67 counties. The project was conceived in October, after the governor’s staff heard from a serviceman who explained that he could not see his family through webcams as other troops could. The problem was not a lack of broadband in Iraq, where he was stationed, but a lack of the service in rural Alabama.
The project is part of the Alabama Broadband Initiative, which Riley launched in May to ensure that all Alabamians have access to high-speed Internet. The initiative is focused on increasing communities’ use of broadband to enhance healthcare systems, education, public libraries, public safety, local government, and other services.
