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Dear Netters, A colleague of mine forwarded me this from another list. Has anyone else heard about this plan? Should we start swamping the White House with our thoughts on this? Ms. Davidson makes some great points! Bonnie Fulmer, Librarian Spackenkill High School Library 112 Spackenkill Road Poughkeepsie, NY 12603 gbf1@maristb.marist.edu --------------------------- Original Message --------------------------- TO: Colleagues interested in access to government information FROM: Sue Davidsen, Technology Librarian & Operations Manager, MLink, The University of Michigan Library DATE: 21 October 1994 As I was watching last night's Headline News, I saw the piece that covered the unveiling of the new www.whitehouse.gov web site for U.S. government information. Point and click, bells and whistles, pictures, icons, audio -- all of the signs of a Mosaic client. Then I heard the voice-over say that the administration was planning to put computer kiosks directly connected to this service in every POST OFFICE in the United States. After some calls to the White House and the Postal Service, I found out that our government is indeed going to put Internet connections in the post offices of our country while public libraries are at this point completely left out of the equation. The post office -- which, arguably, manages information flow in print form, is going to introduce a fairly sophisticated information delivery system and get a connection to the Internet while the community library, which has been an information provider, navigator and access manager for over a hundred and fifty years in our country, is given a URL. According to the Postal News Press Release of October 20, 1994, _Service to the Citizen Kiosk Pilot Program_ "...One of the most important tasks of the Postal Service is to guard against the risk of creating two societies: the electronic information 'haves' and have-nots.' ... America's postal system has been the trusted third party in the communications chain that binds the nation together. This public trust can now be extended to help the information revolution move forward." I think there is likely more public trust in a public agency that is clearly an advocate for free access to information that crosses socio-economic, gender, religious, age and racial lines and is a much more deeply ingrained information-oriented cultural icon in a community than a post office. For more than 150 years, public libraries have been providing government information to the citizens of this country. Where are they in the grand scheme of information delivery announced yesterday? I haven't seen or heard the word library in any of my research on this topic. Most public libraries in the United States do not have Internet connections. What could that Internet connection mean to public libraries? Not only could the public library provide that government information to the public, but they could train their citizenry how to use the technology, how to navigate in a hypertext information environment and provide referrals to the public who have not found the information they needed from the Whitehouse web site. Communities could also benefit from an Internet connection at the public library by accessing information to support rural health issues, education, and economic and community development. Despite the words of last night's HNN report, using Mosaic as an interface to the White House information system is not fast, even on a standard academic computer network and using hypertext is not a simple easy-to-use navigational tool -- not when you're looking at the amount of information that the government is planning to provide and the complexity of the federal government itself. On page 2 of this U.S. Postal Service document cited above, it states, " The public's reaction, software and hardware useability, kiosk operation and support, usage rates and identification of the most popular topics, and *willingness to pay for convenience* [my stress] are all factors that will contribute to evaluating the success of the program." Considering this statement in light of GPO's planned charge to nondepository libraries for providing connections to GPO Access, I can't help but hear some warning bells going off. Please contact Vice President Gore's Office by calling the White House: 202-456-1414; or e-mail: vice.president@whitehouse.gov. to voice your support for public libraries as *free* government information providers to their communities. I encourage you to forward this message to appropriate lists and people who can help us with this grass-roots campaign. If you would like a copy of the Postal News cited above, you can contact Mark Saunders, Media Relations Representative at 202-268-2171. Sue Davidsen