Many of you are familiar or participated in last year’s
digital inclusion survey. For those of you who might be new and have not heard about this, please check it out. Now the website can be a bit difficult to navigate, so let’s try and point out a couple of valuable things. While it is certainly encouraged to browse around the site, a good starting point is the
interactive map. Recently, the digital inclusion people put a note towards the top of the mapping tool indicating a number of changes to the data, various “enhancements”, and the ability for you to update your own data. The easiest way to get started is to scroll down on the map page to the actual map, and directly above the map is a search box (called library lookup) for your library name (keep in mind that this is the name of the library, not necessarily your city). You can also use one of the draw tools to select a custom area on the map. Once you locate your library from the library lookup feature, the search will retrieve a map on the left and various folders on the right that summarize the following areas (with data pulled from census): Demographics, Economics, Education, Health, and Survey. While this is the same stuff you can get from Census, arguably this might be a more decent starting point or overview of data to better know your library service area. One other thing worth mentioning is that if you click on the map marker for your library you will get a pop-up that summaries the specific digital inclusion data for your library (or library branch). This includes the number of public access computers, broadband speed, technology services/resources, training, and programs/assistance. Underneath the google map photo on the left side of this pop-up, you can change the demographic radius (from 1, 3, 5, or 10 miles), export a summary profile of your library to a PDF (e.g. to hand out to board members, local policy makers, or members of the community), or edit your survey information. If things have changed, please update your information so that the maps are kept up to date. You can do this by clicking on the “Edit Branch & Survey Info” bar (again, just below the google map photo of your library, or the street in front of your library). Shaka.
