Wireless is changing the policy calculus for municipal broadband

Historically, the justification for municipal provisioning of “last-mile” communications infrastructure has focused on the natural monopoly aspect of wireline infrastructure. Growing interest in wireless ISPs, municipal hot spots, and access to public space for siting wireless infrastructure suggests new and expanded opportunities for local government participation in telecommunication services. This paper examines the implications of emerging wireless technologies for the policy debate over whether municipalities should be playing an active role in providing last-mile broadband services and, if so, what the nature of that role should be.     

Making IT work for municipalities: Building municipal wireless networks

The lack of widely available, affordable broadband Internet access has spurred a movement in which municipalities are rolling out wireless broadband networks. This movement has raised a number of questions including: Why are municipalities acting as the early adopters of wireless broadband technology? How does increased state regulation of municipal broadband networks affect this trend and how can cities respond? As cities use wireless broadband technology to enhance services to citizens, the growth of municipal wireless deployments has transitioned from linear to exponential. In response, many states have passed laws to regulate and restrict cities' ability to own, operate, deploy, or profit from either telecommunications or information services. Current and pending laws will be examined to understand how cities can deploy a wireless broadband network under these regulations. An analysis of municipal facilities and technology expertise illustrates the opportunity for public–private cooperation in wireless deployments. This paper will show that cooperation is beneficial in many cases. Finally, current business models will be examined for their ability to foster cooperation between the public and private sectors, bridge the digital divide, and create competition among private sector providers.     

Wired broadband access to modern communication networks (Overview)

The current state of the market for broadband access (BBA) to modern communication networks and the development of broadband technologies in Russia are considered. The actual share of broadband products in the Russian telecommunication market and the social importance of the technology for the country are analyzed, as well as the necessity of its development to implement the E-government project. The broadband channel capacity that is necessary to promote new communications solutions is assessed. The technology basis of wired broadband (digital subscriber lines, local area networks, fiber lines, and their combinations) is considered. An attempt to foresee the developmental prospects of this technology is made.     

Evolving technologies support mobile and collaborative curriculum: a case study

This case study describes the efforts of librarians to integrate mobile devices, collaboration tools, and resources into a School of Medicine third-year pediatric clerkship. Additional class emphasis is on evidence-based searching and journal article evaluation and presentation. The class objectives ensure that students are comfortable with mobile devices and collaboration tools. Over the eight-year history of the course, student acceptance of the mobile devices used diminished as the devices aged, necessitating the evaluation and selection of new technologies. Collaboration tools and mobile applications employed in the course evolved to accommodate curriculum changes.     

Reconfiguring public Internet access in Austin, TX: Wi-Fi's promise and broadband divides

This paper assesses the ways in which local actors are reconfiguring public access to broadband through the unlicensed spectrum. The process of adoption and configuration of public Wi-Fi networks in Austin, Texas, is the focus of our case study. Austin is one of the most “unwired” cities in the United States and increasingly known as a world-class industrial center in wireless. The development of strategic visions about public Wi-Fi services among user groups and local startups provided a fertile ground for diverse partnerships among nonprofit groups, broadband providers, wireless ISPs, and the city government. We also found that the popularity of the venue-sponsored or free-to-end-user model of access is supported by different providers that see their interests represented in the growth of public wireless broadband. However, the prevailing model of public Wi-Fi has a strong commercial bias. This, combined with the historical socioeconomic divides in the city, has resulted in an uneven geography of public Wi-Fi networks.     

Analysis of the urban/rural broadband divide in Canada: Using GIS in planning terrestrial wireless deployment

Millions of Canadians residing in Canada's northern, isolated, rural, and remote communities do not have broadband Internet access. This situation has led to a national “broadband divide.” That is, the deployment of wireline broadband is very limited in Canada's northern, isolated, rural, and remote areas because of the significant expense of installation and maintenance of the wired infrastructure needed to reach dwellings in these locations.Terrestrial broadband wireless technology, on the other hand, does not entail the same kind of physical infrastructure. As a result, there are dramatic changes in how spatial considerations affect the provision of broadband Internet services (BIS) to areas beyond the urban zone. In particular, the spatial question is now focused on assessing the capacity for different technological solutions to reach profitable population bases, and brings to the forefront organizations that are developing non-line-of-sight (NLOS) technologies that would permit wireless Internet access over much greater distances than current solutions.We begin this paper by establishing the importance of broadband connectivity to Canada's northern, isolated, rural, and remote communities. This discussion comments on the role of the Government of Canada in the provision of broadband connectivity to residents of these communities, and outlines the current regulatory issues that govern wireless services and policy formulation.The second part of the paper illustrates the use of geographic information system (GIS) approaches in the study of wireless broadband planning and deployment. Case study findings suggest that GIS applications can make a significant contribution to the analysis of wireless deployment planning, to the understanding of the relationships between wireless signal sources and consumers, and to the spatial configuration of terrestrial wireless broadband networks. We conclude the paper by discussing how the GIS approach employed could be used to inform the public policy process with regard to increasing access to broadband Internet services in all regions of the country, and thereby providing the opportunity for all Canadians, regardless of location, to fully participate in the Information Society.     

Using mobile technologies to give health students access to learning resources in the UK community setting

Objectives: This article describes a project which explored the potential for mobile technologies to give health students in the community access to learning resources. The purpose included the need to identify possible barriers students could face in using mobile technologies. Another focus was to assess the students perceptions of the importance of being able to access learning resources in the community. Methods: This 1‐year project used two main approaches for data collection. A review of the literature on mobile technologies in the health context was conducted. This was used in a systematic way to identify key issues and trends. The literature review was used to inform the design and production of a questionnaire. This was distributed to and completed by a group of community health students at Northumbria University, UK. The questionnaire was piloted and there was a 100% completion rate with 49 returned forms. Results: The literature review indicated that most mobile technology applications were occurring in the US. At the time of the review the most prevalent mobile technologies were PDAs, laptops, WAP phones and portable radios with use being concentrated around doctors in the acute sector. A range of advantages and disadvantages to the technology were discovered. Mobile technologies were mainly being used for clinical rather than learning applications. The students showed a low level of awareness of the technology but placed great importance to accessing learning resources from the community. Conclusions: Significant development and changes are taking place in mobile technologies. Since the data collection for this work was completed in 2004 podcasting and videocasting have become significant in mobile learning for health professionals. Librarians will need to address the relevance and implications of m‐learning for their practice. Care and consideration needs to be given on the time and resources librarians allocate for the necessary development work around mobile technologies. Collaboration and partnership working will be most effective approach for librarians wishing to integrate their services with m‐learning technologies.     

城市住宅小区的图书馆建设

随着我国城市住宅小区化的发展，图书馆的建设已成为小区化建设的重要组成部分。章就如何在城市住宅小区中普及图书馆(室)提出了一些看法。     

The prospects for broadband deployment in rural America

A great deal of policy attention over the past two years has been directed at insuring that more communities within the country have access to high speed or “broadband” connections. The 1996 Telecommunications Act promises through its universal service provisions that telecommunications services will be roughly comparable across urban and rural areas, but the rapid development of new Internet-based services and the networks on which they depend illustrates huge discrepancies in broadband availability. This paper analyzes some of the programs and policies that claim to address this network divide, using existing data to comment on their efficacy. These analyses suggest that the prospects for near-term broadband services in rural region are dim, and that the existing policy approaches appear insufficient to achieve the goal of widespread rural deployment.     

Evolving Concepts and Business Models for Acquiring Electronic Resources

ABSTRACT

Libraries, publishers, and agents all face unique challenges related to the acquisition of electronic resources. Among the many variables that figure into the acquisition of an e-resource are access rights, pricing models, and packaging options. This article looks at several of these variables from both the publisher's and the agent's view, evaluating the current state of affairs and addressing forthcoming developments.     

Making It Work for Everyone: An Evolving Reference Service

At an academic health science center, librarians identified problems, weaknesses, and strengths in reference services. The on-call reference schedule was discontinued and a question flowchart was developed for circulation staff. Only research questions were referred to librarians, who would respond if available. Circulation staff perceived the unscheduled, voluntary model was not working well for the patrons or the staff. After two months, the schedule was reinstated with a hybrid version of the previous on-call format. In the process of changing the service model, the library staff also underwent a cultural change.     

A conceptual model for the development of broadband and e-government

The paper discusses the interconnection of the adoption and diffusion of broadband (‘BB’), e-government (‘EG’) and e-commerce (‘EC’) services. It provides a structured literature review and proposes a conceptual framework for studying the interconnection of the development and adoption of BB, EG and EC. The interconnections of various concepts are shown along with several hypotheses that are thoroughly theoretically grounded. The role of different technology acceptance models is discussed, while the importance of including various aspects in policy preparation analyses is emphasized.     

数字资源远程访问技术及访问系统构建

列举了图书馆数字资源远程访问的主流技术及其优缺点,指出了图书馆应根据具体技术条件和用户情况采取相应的技术构建访问系统,介绍了解放军医学图书馆采用反向代理技术构建的数字资源远程访问系统。     

Academic Reference Centre access for UK universities

Describes the Academic Reference Centre, a collaborative project enabling universities on the JANET and SuperJANET network to access and search a selection of over sixty databases from within the university.     

Evolving journal costs: implications for publishers,libraries, and readers

In this article, we summarize the cost implications of print and electronic publishing for scientific scholarly journal publishers, libraries, and scientists. In each case, we developed detailed cost models to demonstrate the importance of factors that affect publishing and decisions made by libraries and scientists to determine whether to subscribe to a journal; if so, in print or electronic medium, and, if not, what alternative information sources to use. In all instances, estimates of unit cost are essential for understanding the dynamics of the economic and systemic interdependencies of publishers, libraries, and readers.     

Media Convergence/Management Change: The Evolving Workflow for Visual Journalists

This article, based on a national survey of photo editors and Web directors from news organizations publishing, both online and in hard copy, examines the differences in workflow of visual journalists. An evolution in how news photographs are used and in the aesthetic and technical handling is occurring as newspapers embrace new media publishing. As a result, newspapers and news organizations are creating different operating systems within the field of photo editing and Web production. This article was done in conjunction with Kenny Irby, Visual Journalism Group Leader, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies.     

Aggregating broadband demand: Surveying the benefits and challenges for public libraries

Public libraries in the United States play an important role in their communities by providing free internet access to all residents. Research exists that discusses public library connectivity by investigating funding, technical aspects, and library mission, and that also promotes membership in regional or state consortia as a means of making broadband internet connections more affordable. The research discussed here builds upon these works by asking the question: Do the benefits of aggregation, or pooling demand, justify the investment of state library resources in establishing and maintaining a library cooperative to support internet access? It reports on a survey of Indiana public library directors on questions related to connectivity, E-rate funding, and participation in the Public Library Internet Consortium, a statewide cooperative established by the Indiana State Library. The survey was conducted by Dr. Mary Alice Ball, who was affiliated with Indiana University School of Library and Information Science, Indianapolis while conducting the relevant research. Dr. Ball chairs the Telecommunications Subcommittee of the American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy.     

The librarian as a member of the education department team: using web 2.0 technologies to improve access to education materials and information

The part-time solo librarian at St. James Healthcare in Butte, Montana, serves physicians, staff, patients, and other health care professionals in the area. The library is part of the Education Department within the hospital's organizational structure. Recent developments have expanded the requirements of the Education Department, creating new challenges. The librarian is a member of the team developing solutions to the many ways that continuing education needs have to be met for the staff and physicians. A free website that houses education information and material is one of the projects that has been created and is maintained by the librarian.