SASKATOON (Staff) — Computers and couriers aren’t the cheap solution to meet rural residents” library needs.
“I can’t see it doing the job out here and I don’t see that changing for the next 10 to 20 years,” said Michael Keaschuk, director of the Chinook library system based in Swift Current, Sask.
Home computers are not prevalent and the long-distance phone costs to pass along a lot of information are still prohibitive. Keaschuk said people want books for pleasure reading and a computer screen doesn’t work for “someone who wants 10 westerns a month.”
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John Tooth, president of the Manitoba Library Association, said “the assumption is that everything is in electronic form and that’s not true.”
Someone in the library would have to type in the information. It breaks copyright rules to send huge passages or entire books electronically. Ironically, even the provincial education departments that use computers in their distance education courses mail the information to students on large computer discs.
Sharon Tapp of Alberta’s distance education library said the cost of transmitting information over phone lines is still expensive and the volume of material means personal computers are too small and centralized computers in schools must be used to download it.
However, the phone companies are working on lowering those costs. Tooth said the Manitoba government is working on reducing the bill “so it won’t cost you any more to dial in from Tuelon as to dial in from Winnipeg.”
Sask Tel’s Ron Podbielski said long distance rates are half of what they were seven years ago, and the number of calls has been increasing seven or eight percent a year. All the Canadian phone companies are working on building an interlinked information highway.
“It’s so new in terms of these data bases and what’s possible that we are still finding our way.”
