Gates Foundation gives library grants in 11 states
SEATTLE --The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Tuesday announced plans to give $8.1 million in grants to keep library computers up-to-date in 11 states.
The grants will help upgrade computer hardware in public libraries serving communities with high concentrations of poverty.
This is the second round of foundation's library hardware "opportunity online" grants. More than 800 library branches in Alaska, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington are eligible in this round.
The libraries must provide local matching dollars to get the grants. The program requires a total local commitment of $4.1 million.
Nearly all public libraries in the U.S. provide Internet access, but many are struggling to keep up with technology advances and increasing demand for access, said Jill Nishi, deputy director of the U.S. libraries initiative at the Gates Foundation.
"In today's economy, it is critical that people have equal access to the information and knowledge that are available online," Nishi said.
Four out of five libraries say they don't have enough computers to meet community needs and 60 percent say they don't have the money or space to add more public computers in the next year, according to a report based on a 2007 national survey by the Florida State University Information School and the American Library Association.
The first round of computer hardware grants were awarded in October 2007 to libraries in Colorado, Delaware, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah and Wyoming. A third round is scheduled for 2009 for libraries in Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin.
The remaining 18 states are not eligible for opportunity online hardware grants because they benefited from another foundation grant program in 2006.
The Gates Foundation was created in 2000 by the Microsoft chairman and his wife. Besides an endowment of about $32 billion from its founders, another estimated $31 billion is coming from Warren Buffet, who announced in 2006 he would be giving much of his wealth to the Gates Foundation to distribute. 