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Mayor talks library Internet hot spots at City Club

While introducing Chicago Public Library Commissioner Brian Bannon at a City Club of Chicago event on Wednesday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel discussed the library’s new program that allows patrons to check out Internet hotspots.

Under the “Internet to Go” hotspot lending program, Chicago Public Library’s Brighton Park, Greater Grand Crossing, and Douglass branches will each make about 100 devices available for check out by patrons for as much as three weeks at a time, according to the Mayor’s Office. The program was made possible by a $400,000 Knight Foundation grant, and Google plans to donate an additional $175,000 for the program.

“The libraries, through technology, have allowed and enabled us to make sure that every part of the city is accessing not only the information in the library, but accessing the world,” Emanuel said on Wednesday.

Bannon during his speech highlighted the importance of providing Internet access to Chicagoans. He explained that about one-third of Chicagoans do not have their own Internet access at home, according to figures compiled in 2013. He added that those figures show 19 percent of city residents have never been online.

Bannon also discussed the positive influence public libraries played in his own education while growing up in a rural community in Washington state. After his parents discovered he had learning difficulties, Bannon said his local library provided him the “extra help” he needed in school.

“It was my public library that stepped in for me at that time,” he said. “It was a place where I learned reading and writing; I received tutoring. It’s also the place where I learned to use my first computer, and it’s also where I discovered that libraries were much more than a warehouse of books – in fact, that they were centers of learning.”

-Tom Butala