The Broadband Summit was held Wednesday, May 20, 2009, at the Kellogg Center in East Lansing, Michgian.
This event was sponsored by the American Library Association Office of Information Technology Policy and supported by the Library of Michigan Foundation.
For information on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding for broadband, see our Stimulus Information Page
The Library of Michigan, with the sponsorship of the American Library Association - Office of Information Technology Policy in Washington, D.C. and the support of the Library of Michigan Foundation, held a Broadband Summit on May 20, 2009. The Summit took place at the Kellogg Center on the campus of Michigan State University.
The event was attended by nearly 200 librarians and community stakeholders such as county managers and city officials. Librarians came from across with the state including the U.P. with particularly strong representation of the upper 2/3 of the lower peninsula. The summit focused on providing information about how libraries, municipalities, businesses, hospitals and others could partner to bring broadband service to their communities.
Each summit segment is available in streaming video thanks to the Merit Network who provided some of the work as an in-kind contribution to the summit. Check out "Conference Sessions" on the left. Additional thanks go to AADL productions for the video "Bandwidth or Without" also found on the Conference Sesssions page.
This site hosted as an in-kind contribution by the Michigan Library Consortium (MLC).
WE NEED YOUR HELP:
To assist in a statewide application for NTIA stimulus money for public computing centers, the Library of Michigan in conjunction with the Michigan State University (College of Communications Arts and Sciences) is asking the library community to assist in gathering information via a survey available online at:
Please help us get as many responses as possible to this survey, from libraries, community colleges, extension offices, community centers, etc. There is a minimum of $200 million available nationally in ARRA funding for competitive grants to expand "public computer center capacity." Public libraries and community colleges are specifically referenced as eligible for this funding. We are still waiting for the release of funding guidelines, expected any day now.
We will keep the survey open through the month of July, closing on July 31st.
If you have comments on how this funding could be best utilized in a statewide application, please include them on the survey.
Sponsorship
The Library of Michigan would like to thank the American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy for their generous sponsorship of this program, in particular the close support of Carrie Lowe.
We also extend our thanks to the Library of Michigan Foundation, to the Merit Network for their partial in-kind contribution of the video of the conference and to the Michigan Library Consortium for hosting this site. Additional thanks go to AADL productions for the video "Bandwidth or Without" found on the Conference Sesssions page.
