Director of the Garfield Library in Brunswick, New York, and author of A Practical Guide to Internet Filters (Neal-Schuman, 1997)
kgs@bluehighways.com
Column for March 1999
There is a direct relationship between how you feel about the federal “e-rate” subsidy program and whether you've seen a letter committing the funds to your library. I know this, because our library received a commitment letter for our 40% discount while I was in the middle of writing this column, and my working title changed from “Snowball in Hell” to what you read above. I also rushed out and filled out a 470 form before the year-two window closed on February 11.
I don't hate the e-rate any more—but then, I didn't apply for it, either: Our consortium did. If I had to fill out the 470 and 471 forms on my own, I wouldn't have bothered. True, the e-rate program ultimately will result in a check equal to several weeks' worth of book purchases. But my limited experience with the byzantine, ever-changing paperwork, and my conversations with those who had descended into e-rate purgatory and spent their working lives on the phone with support staff at the Schools and Libraries Division (SLD), the agency that manages the fund, convinced me that it would have been more cost-effective to sell cupcakes on Interstate 90.
Despite that, I agree with an increasing number of colleagues (that is, those of us who have actually seen, or at least smelled, the money) that overall the e-rate is a very good idea, and for a federal program could have been a lot worse. For many libraries, the e-rate discount promises significant fiscal relief, so that the services that suffered because technology soaked up the cash can blossom again.
Those of us with prior experience with the feds have some admiration for just how fast the e-rate program happened. As Mitch Friedman, executive director of the Westchester Library System in New York, put it, “Federal programs are always a mess.” For that matter, anything new is a mess. Like other e-rate optimists, Fred Smith of the New York Division of Library Development predicted that the “confidence level” would increase with more experience. That we got this far is testimony to the combined efforts of the SLD, ALA's Washington Office, and supporters on Capitol Hill. And don't forget how new this turf is for us. “The SLD . . . had the unenviable task of building the airplane while it was in flight,” said Tony Wening, program director of the Missouri Research and Education Network.
What's really wrong with the e-rate
Never mind that a handful of legislators keep trying to kill the e-rate, or that the paperwork is so hard it takes your guru all year to fill it out (which means he or she doesn't get other things done), or that the telcos don't think we're so nice anymore, or that you can get a discount on a T1 line but not a modem, or that the schools got money before we did, or that we have been in the dark for over a year on how much money we would get and when we would get it. These are just the peeves associated with anything as complicated as federal assistance.
The real problem with the e-rate we only know through intuition and deduction, because the SLD hasn't organized its data to make this easily accessible (which itself is a problem). When the dust settles, I believe we will find that in many cases the e-rate isn't helping its target audience, the poorest libraries. As Michael Golrick of the Southern Connecticut Library Council wrote on the Universal Services Internet discussion list, “It is axiomatic that the smaller the library (and the greater the financial need) the more important it is for help to be provided.”
The 470 alone is six complex pages with 13 pages of fine-print instructions explicable only to people who have some technology training to begin with. Most of the poorest libraries lack the internal or external assistance, the technical acumen, or simply the time to fill out mounds of paperwork on the stray chance some of it will turn into discounts -- particularly since these libraries would still need to find funding sources for computers and related hardware not covered by the e-rate. We cannot fault regional and state networks if their overworked consultants cannot manage the paperwork for every single library. So the rich get richer and the poor get no Internet. How is this an improvement?
What won't fix the e-rate
On the one hand, the e-rate will not be fixed by throwing rocks at the SLD, Capitol Hill, or even disgruntled telcos. You might feel better, but it won't solve a thing. And dismantling the e-rate without first ensuring a reasonable alternative won't fix things, either.
On the other hand, we librarians do not need to be told to “be patient” or to “just hang in there.” It is a mistake to ignore the very real grievances of librarians, or to fail to address the deafening silence surrounding who is getting what, when. It concerns me that the bulk of public information regarding the payment “waves” has been carried by one overworked state consultant, Rich Greenfield, technology coordinator for the Alaska State Library, who out of enlightened self-interest has developed a wonderful Web site where e-rate information can be readily tracked.
A few suggestions
My first suggestion: The SLD and ALA need to hustle, now, to lobby for a year-two filing extension. As I write this in early February, I know instinctively that many small libraries that have not received discounts have not refiled their paperwork—which means they may be staring at a year-one check after the year-two deadline passes. Don't let that happen. And if we run into the same problem next year, address it then, too.
The second suggestion is a no-brainer: Simplify the paperwork. There's a strong need for a 470 and 471 “E-Z.” Bob Bocher, library technology consultant with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, points out that the ability to get discounts on internal connections—important primarily for larger libraries and for schools—is also largely responsible for the complexity of the forms. He recommends three versions of the 470: one for Internet Service Providers, one for telcos, and one for internal connections. The first two would be the “E-Z” forms; the third would be the long form.
Other ideas abound. We need a simple method for continuing discounted services from year to year that does not include reapplying for the program all over again. While we can't put a consultant in every library, perhaps states that do not have enough consultants to help with paperwork could seek funding for 800 lines staffed by enough people to answer questions during the filing periods—which is “exactly what went on in northeast Iowa,” said Ken Davenport of the Northeast Iowa Regional Library System.
Block grants, automatic discounts, and other ways to retool the e-rate also come up for discussion. Magi Malone, statewide technology librarian at the Montana State Library, suggests using U.S. Census poverty data for creating automatic sliding-scale discounts for services. Several people, including Bob Bocher, encouraged ALA to investigate block grants—passing money from the feds to libraries—though Bocher was also concerned about developing an equitable formula. Jean Currie, executive director of the South Central Regional Library Council in New York, points out that rural hospitals have been part of the e-rate program since the beginning but have their own process, and suggests we look into doing the same.
Communicate, communicate
The real e-rate challenge is to get these and other ideas to the people who need them. If there is one theme running through the e-rate problem, it is the failure to communicate. The SLD has excellent Beltway savvy, but lacks the ability to schmooze with the library community. The SLD has had audioconferences with a handful of folks since the beginning, but this communication hasn't trickled down to the state and regional level, and no one else has stepped up to the plate. A lot more libraries would have applied for year-two funding, I believe, if someone—the SLD, ALA, the FCC, whoever—had said “we're going to be funded late in the game,” or even “we don't have a clue where the money is right now.”
My advice: Let ALA develop an aggressive PR arm for the e-rate with gift of gab and the willingness to call it like it is in both directions, toward us, the librarians, and toward the many stakeholders involved in the e-rate. While we're at it, the ALA Washington Office should offer more of its very useful basic workshops that got the e-rate off and running (or limping, at any rate).
We also don't have any data on who is—and more significantly, who is not—applying for the e-rate. Let's funnel enough money to ALA's Office for Information Technology Policy so it can conduct fast, real-time studies of who is and who is not applying for the e-rate-data that can be used during the application window, if necessary, to help the poorest libraries get their paperwork done. We also need to identify what helps these libraries—phone support, direct intervention, workshops—and seek funding for more of the same.
This was our year to grow up—to become Beltway librarians ready to play with the big dogs. It hasn't been easy, fun, or smooth, and some people put in a huge amount of effort with little or no gain. Nevertheless, we e-rate optimists can dream enough to believe that in the long run we will see a very positive impact on our revenue streams, freeing money so we can continue to provide all kinds of wonderful services—books, computers, videotapes, and the Internet—without sacrificing one to the other.