WebJunction

When in doubt, give patrons what they want. And who wouldn’t want their library to provide both a connection to the Web and qualified staff to help them find what they were looking for?

Most new laptops come ready to connect to wireless local area networks. Members of the new wireless generation travel with their laptops; they do homework, keep their business running, and stay in touch with friends and loved ones via e-mail and chat.

As librarians our job is to connect our clients with the content and services they need. Increasingly many of these resources are online. Most of our libraries have insufficient numbers of Internet workstations to meet customer demands. Let’s make it easy for users who already have laptops to come into the library, where it’s easiest for us to help them, with free access to the Web! It’s cheap, it’s easy, and you’ll be a hero. Think your library is too small to offer such fancy, highfalutin technologies? Read on…

What is Wi-Fi?

Wi-Fi is short for “wireless fidelity”, and is another name for a wireless communications standard called “IEEE 802.11b” or “802.11g”. 802.11b is the older slower version of this standard, sending and receiving data at 11 megabits per second; 802.11g is the newer, faster standard, capable of 54 megabit-per-second communications. Laptops often feature built in wireless network cards or accept plug in adapters that support either 802.11b or g protocols.

Both standards provide broadband connections to the Internet and allow users to surf the Web and use e-mail. Increasingly coffee houses, hotels, schools, airports, and (imagine this!) libraries are making Wi-Fi available to attract and meet customers’ needs.

Wi-Fi in Libraries:  Two Case Studies

Twin Bridges is a town of less than 700 people in Montana’s trout fishing and historic gold mining country. Wonderfully, Twin Bridges Public Library is a Wi-Fi hotspot!   The Library’s Board Chair, Paula Gilman, says that it’s mostly students and travelers who are finding it useful. Like many smaller libraries, TBPL has limited early morning, evening, or weekend hours.  Not to worry, though: their Wi-Fi hot spot spills out on to the street. A bench, placed in front of the library, provides comfort (when the weather’s comfortable!) for after-hours surfers and correspondents. Because TBPL doesn’t have any servers, it was easy for their local computer wizard to set up a secure wireless connection, piggybacking on their existing DSL (digital subscriber line) connection. Equipment and installation cost just a little over $100, and their Wi-Fi access shares an existing DSL connection—so there’s no extra monthly Internet access charge.

Missoula Public Library serves one of Montana’s larger ‘urban’ counties, (Missoula’s city population is just over 60,000). MPL deployed a standalone wireless connection in 2003, isolating public wireless access from the library’s T1 frame relay connection in order to protect bandwidth of and security for staff workstations and servers.

Both tiny Twin Bridges Public Library and Montana’s larger Missoula Public Library’s Wi-Fi hotspots have proved popular with patrons, providing a connection to the world’s knowledge-goodies with reference librarians at the ready.

What Your Library Will Need

Ready to consider wireless for your library?  Here’s what you’ll need:

1. A broadband Internet connection through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), $40-$120/month plus installation costs. Broadband Internet access typically is achieved using DSL, cable, ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), or dedicated frame relay access. In Montana, a DSL connection with Internet access runs in the neighborhood of $50 to $125 a month.
2. An access point, preferably supporting both 802.11b and g protocols, costing under $100. Access points are dictionary-sized gizmos, incorporating the functions of a hub, a router, a transmitter, and a receiver. Your access point either connects to your LAN (local area network), or directly to the Internet. The newer standard 802.11g access points can support wireless laptops as far as 150 feet away, but walls and ‘noisy’ electronics can shorten this distance. You can provide hotspots throughout your library with additional access points or range extenders. Popular access point brands include Linksys http://www.linksys.com, and NetGear http://www.netgear.com.
   Note: Because a wireless access point (definition) acts similar to a hub (not a switch) on a wired LAN (definition), the total bandwidth is divided among all users using an access point (see the Bandwidth Availability section of Wireless Security).  More importantly, the total bandwidth available is going to be limited by the speed of your internet connection (which is typically much slower, e.g., a T1 (definition) line is only capable of 1.544Mbits per second).  An important consideration, especially if your Wi-Fi access is going to be sharing its internet connection with your wired LAN, may be the ability to limit bandwidth and/or protocols (e.g., http, https, ftp, etc.) either via the AP itself, or through another firewall or router.
3. An understanding of what your patrons will need to know to connect to your network. Typically those bringing laptops into your library will know the ropes. But you might want to put together a brochure for the good of your staff as well as your public. Scottsdale Public Library, the Boston Public Library,  the Palo Alto Library, or the St. Joseph County Public Library, have all written great instructions you might consider.
   Because patrons are used to an expectation of privacy in a library setting, it is especially important to inform your patrons of the necessity of properly safeguarding their computers and data when using relatively insecure public Wi-Fi.  A good starting point is the Complete Guide to Wi-Fi Security by Tony Bradley & Becky Waring.
4. An 'Acceptable Internet Use' Policy. Wireless users should abide by your library’s Acceptable Internet Use Policy.   This is for your protection as much as their education. Some libraries offer filtered wireless access to the Internet, others don’t.  In terms of policy, wireless Internet access is probably no different than your wired Web workstation-related policies. There’s an extensive compilation of good Internet policies on WebJunction.
5. Means of protecting your staff network from Wi-Fi users. Many libraries have staff workstations, circulation systems, mail, and web or content servers. With any kind of public Internet access, wired or wireless, you want to constrain non-staff access to library applications and servers.
   Note: You have two alternatives: a) Connect both staff and public access through one point of Internet access, and protect your staff-side with a bombproof firewall (usually a hardware firewall); or b) Connect staff resources to one Internet connection (don’t forget the firewall), and connect public access (wired or wireless) to the Internet through another completely separate connection. This second option is probably the simplest to implement, and with broadband costs coming down, becoming more affordable.
   In either case you’ll want to get qualified help setting this up, as there are several complex issues to consider, including using DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol -- definition), NAT (Network Address Translation -- definition), bandwidth, protocol, and time limiting, authentication, and so on.  If you don’t have network-savvy staff, see if your ISP or a local vendor can help you set this up. It might cost a few bucks, but you can’t afford unauthorized access to your servers and library applications, nor do you want to allow nefarious characters the ability to utilize your Wi-Fi for spamming, hacking, illegal file trading, etc.
6. A plan for marketing your library’s Wi-Fi hotspot. After you bring Wi-Fi up in your library, brag it up. Trumpet the good news with banners over your front door and signs stretching wide across your front windows. Get articles in your local newspaper and on the TV news. Most radio stations will run public service announcements letting your community know that their library is serving up Wi-Fi access, along side other great library services. And, perhaps most importantly, make sure to advertise your new Wi-Fi on the front page of your library’s Web site. Patrons who have laptops are probably accessing your library’s services primarily through your Web site from home … or that Internet café down the street!

What Your Patrons Will Need

Your patrons will need to have a wireless enabled laptop or Wi-Fi wireless adapter  ($75) and simple instructions for connecting to your wireless network. Windows and Macintosh computers can both use your Wi-Fi network, as long as they have a wireless adapter that can ‘talk’ to your access point wired public Internet access workstations.

For More Information

To talk to other folks in the WebJunction community doing the Wi Fi thing, check out our Wireless discussion, and see the documents in our Wireless Networking content section.

Here’s a U.S. map of libraries with wireless.

For issues related to Wireless and CIPA, WebJunction provides a link from its CIPA page to a FAQ written by Bob Bocher of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, which talks about wireless.  Another article by Bocher and Mary Minow, librarian/attorney at librarylaw.com, is CIPA: Key Issues for Decision Makers.
 
  As for E-rate issues related to wireless, go to the SLD eligible services list and search for the word "wireless".