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FEATURE
Building a Digital Equity Strategy From the Ground Up
by Alexandra (Alex) Houff
| Having a full-fledged digital equity department is great, but it’s not required to work to close the inclusion gap. |
Public libraries are vital community hubs. They are among the last remaining free spaces available to all who wish to use them, regardless of economic or social status, gender orientation, age, or any other demographic. Libraries are often the first—and sometimes only—places that many communities can access 3D printing or VR technology and learn related skills. There is no other community facility where you can find a diverse cross-section of community members congregating simultaneously, using different features and resources within the same building, and all for free. Today’s 21st-century library is also increasing access to technology every day, with resources such as recording studios, memory stations, and nonbook collections (such as Rokus and GoPro cameras). All library services are predicated on the notion that community members can use the equipment in the library or at home. That’s when digital equity enters the chat. The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) defines digital equity as “a condition in which all individuals and communities have the information technology capacity needed for full participation in our society, democracy, and economy. Digital equity is necessary for civic and cultural participation, employment, lifelong learning, and access to essential services.” Furthermore, the NDIA considers digital inclusion as the work required to achieve the goal of digital equity. At Baltimore County Public Library (BCPL), we take the role of assuring digital equity seriously and consider it a responsibility and privilege to work with our 19 branches and our community partners to close the county’s digital inclusion gap. While the goal of equitable access continues to be a part of BCPL’s strategic plan, it wasn’t until 2021 that we began to intentionally reduce the fundamental barrier to access. In 2021, Sonia Alacantara-Antoine, our CEO, created the digital equity and virtual services (DEVS) department. In June 2022, I was hired as the department manager to implement an action plan for the vision and to lead staffers with this much-needed library service.
Since then, much effort has been made to align DEVS’ work with the library’s overall mission of providing opportunities to explore, learn, create, and connect. In the process, we have learned how to build a strategy and execute a plan to bring us closer to full digital inclusion in Baltimore County.
Start With Data—Hard and Soft
Public libraries have access to two vital resources regularly: people and data. Both are invaluable when trying to craft an actionable digital equity plan. Using our diversity audit that was completed in 2022, we first identified branches by utilizing the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). This index, created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, uses socioeconomic status, racial and ethnic minority status, housing type, transportation, and other metrics to assess a community’s overall susceptibility to disasters and public health emergencies. This index can be helpful when planning for a community’s anticipated need for digital inclusion practices. Once the branches were identified, we reviewed the data on hotspot and Chromebook circulation among those service areas. This gave us the opportunity to see where areas of high circulation, lower income, and lack of affordable internet access overlapped, as well as the datapoints needed to focus digital skills, technology resources, and access to equipment in the areas with the most need. Additionally, it allowed us to scale back centralized efforts in emerging technologies (such as 3D printing) to home in on the activities and equipment that could be most impactful in those specific communities.
Ask the Communities
Speaking of communities, there is nothing more insightful than working with frontline branch staff and talking directly with members of the community to gain firsthand knowledge about the needs and expectations among the residents. Very early in my tenure, I met with the staff and management of each branch in the system to inquire about the wants and needs of their service area. I asked for anecdotal feedback on staffers’ experiences with lending our hotspots and Chromebooks, the perceived connectivity levels among customers, and the day-to-day experiences with public computer users. This information further helped to tell the story of digital equity and gave the DEVS department clarity in identifying focus areas for each branch. In many instances, the service area data was overlapping, creating efficiencies to group needs by location and geographic proximity, which meant an increasing capacity to assist.
Start Small, Cultivate Community Advocates, and Celebrate Mini Victories
Too often in the business world, the story of success is focused on the quantity of people served. In this case, quantity only tells part of the story. When trying to solve digital equity, it is okay to truly help a small number of people. This serves multiple purposes, with one of the most fundamental being the cultivation of advocates to share and promote the benefits to their networks and communities. Partnering with other organizations that also have a vested interest in achieving digital equity can help identify where the most effective impact can be made. Working side by side with these partners encourages relationships and builds networks. It also amplifies the sense of accomplishment when customers share stories of GED attainment, job successes, and degree ambitions that resulted from skills training or device giveaway.
Staff Is a Critical Success Factor
It is imperative to find staffers who believe in digital equity and are willing to put in the work. Often, digital inclusion work can feel very disjointed and lumbering because there are countless moving parts. Finding staffers who support the effort, believe in the cause, and are willing to continually operate as digital inclusion emissaries can be a challenge. Fortunately, these qualities are often what draw people to become librarians in the first place. Librarians innately want to help people find and access information, and most public librarians realize firsthand that it requires a basic understanding of technology. Despite digital inclusion being closely aligned with the work often associated with librarians, we do not limit digital inclusion work to librarians in the DEVS department. We also have former teachers and event planners helping community members realize their digital potential at digital skills training classes and device distributions. Enthusiasm and dedication are the primary key attributes of staffers, regardless of job title.
Be Prepared to Pivot When Opportunities Are Presented
When doing digital inclusion work, it’s vital to look ahead to visualize the steps that are needed to be able to reach a goal. However, it’s just as important to be able to execute those steps as well. For example, in Baltimore County, BCPL distributed free Chromebooks to qualified community members. It was critical to accurately estimate how many we could distribute so we didn’t over-commit and to have the vision to effectively manage that distribution. To accomplish the proposed distribution, we held more than 40 events at local branches, shelters, and community fairs. As you can imagine, not all of those events went smoothly. We had to be prepared to pivot and adjust on-the-fly. Additionally, when it became clear that our approach was successful, we needed to be able to accommodate more devices and increase our capacity to a point at which we almost doubled the number of devices distributed.
Leverage All Available Avenues of Support
We heavily incorporated the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) as we developed our digital equity plans. We knew there was a risk that it would run out of money but made the conscious decision to build around it anyway. Our sense was that it was more important to get people connected for as long as we could and then address lack-of-funding issues when and if they came to pass. We were fortunate to be able to bundle a lot of our ACP efforts with the state Chromebook initiative since it used the same qualifying criteria. We found that ACP initiatives alone were not enough of an incentive to get people to attend events, but by putting the two together, we had face-to-face conversations with more than 2,200 community members. It gave us valuable insight into the real connectivity issues our communities were dealing with.
While we never stopped advocating to re-fund the ACP, we also took the information we learned from the community encounters to come up with strategies to 1) connect with the community members who received Chromebooks to ensure they are comfortable with the technology they have and 2) ensure customers have a level of digital literacy that empowers them to feel comfortable when talking to internet service providers. In addition to government-funded support, you should find other organizations that have similar stakeholders and can help you identify where you will have the most impact. With limited resources and staffing challenges, co-locating events with those organizations makes providing those services less taxing on employees.
Get Involved in Local Government
BCPL has a representative on Baltimore County’s Digital Equity County Taskforce. This group started in the early days of COVID-19 and is still going strong 4 years later. It consists of digital equity champions in agencies around the county, meets biweekly, and discusses the most pressing concerns in our collective community bases. The meeting is also a place where we can share frustrations and concerns about the trajectory of state and national digital inclusion practices, as well as how we can use our collective voices to affect change. Most importantly, it is an opportunity to hear about initiatives that may align among agencies, to identify synergies between agencies, and to create economies of scale where possible. When appropriate, we partner up for events and provide technology to fill gaps. We were able to almost triple the number of Chromebooks we distributed by working with our county’s Health and Human Services department to hold joint events.
Communicate Often With Internal Advocates
Here at BCPL, we are fortunate to have an administration that is 100% supportive of the digital equity work we are doing. I am encouraged to apply for grants, seek out partnerships, and negotiate terms with vendors that further our mission of closing the inclusion gap. I work closely with our marketing and strategic communications department to ensure they are aware of and can promote the activities and events that we host. Additionally, we provide a systemwide newsletter that outlines all current digital equity activities and initiatives. The entire DEVS staff centers the objective of closing the inclusion gap in every interaction with staffers, customers, and potential supporters. We also work closely with staffers at the Foundation for Baltimore County Public Library to ensure they are on the lookout for potential funding sources for digital inclusion projects.
The inclusion gap has perpetuated over time and persists due to many factors. It was not created by the pandemic, and it won’t end with a year or 2 of focused effort. Digital inclusion work requires a constant push, unrelenting advocacy, and a laser focus on achieving small goals. Libraries play a pivotal role as a community connector, and we can use that role to make a profound impact. Even the smallest library system has departments and branches that can touch many different organizations. By leveraging those relationships, it is possible to meet with and hear from a broad range of communities in need. Even in our small department, with a little bit of outreach, we were able to join staff from a local branch on their visits to a local shelter and bring hotspots and Chromebooks to residents. Likewise, through a relationship one of our staffers cultivated with Head Start, we conducted digital literacy classes for entire cohorts of parents with children in Head Start programs.
Having a full-fledged digital equity department is great, but it’s not required to work to close the inclusion gap. The best piece of advice is to just get started. It’s important to have a plan and a vision, but it’s equally important to take that first step. Every little bit helps, and if everyone waited for everything to line up neatly, nothing would ever get off the ground.
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