The Schuylerville Public Library has won an America Library Association grant to install WiFi in Fort Hardy Park. Part of the ALA’s Libraries Transforming Communities program, the $3,000 grant focuses on small and rural libraries.
“It’s helping the community outside our own little building,” Caitlin Johnson, the library's director, said.
Part of the ALA’s intention was to help smaller libraries build programming that reflects the changing role of libraries, the ALA website says.
"We’ve become more than just books” in the past two decades, Johnson said in an interview.
This grant is part of the library’s expansion of internet services. Like many organizations, the library has seen its mandate change during the pandemic, and a focus has been on internet access for people without.
[Sidebar: the pandemic has forced the region to deal with holes in broadband service. Read more here.]
She said that Spectrum cable can be iffy in some parts of the larger Schuylerville area, so they have been looking to other means of reaching people.
Since last year, when the library could reopen with curbside service, they have been lending wireless hotspots to patrons for a week at a time. The small, four-inch box connects home computers to the internet via cell phone towers and the library's contract with Sprint. They have four for lending.
"They're able to travel with them too," she said, explaining that some people are taking the hotspots on vacation.
The library's indoor public internet also reaches outside the building, around the clock, she said, and the grant from the ALA, with the help from the Village of Schuylerville, will broaden that access into another public space.
She told the Schuylerville Village Board last week that the WiFi hardware will be installed inside a closet in the old visitor center on Reds Road in Fort Hardy Park and should reach the area around the building, some parking lots and some of the ball fields.
The grant covers the costs of equipment and installation as well as five years of the licensing fees. The library will be responsible for maintenance. It has a budget line to cover that and other internet spending. The village does not pay anything.
“You’re all set, then. Thank you for doing it,” said village trustee Whitney Colvin after the vote to approve came. He was running the board meeting in the absence of Mayor Dan Carpenter.
The grant program has been running since 2020 and is offered in partnership with the Association for Rural and Small Libraries, the ALA website says.
Schuylerville Public Library is waiting on hardware. They hope it will be up and running by the end of September, Johnson said.
This is not part of the official redevelopment of Fort Hardy Park that is underway. For more on that, read here.