[12837] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: What is required for information access?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Seth Rothberg)
Tue May 31 01:46:40 1994
Date: Mon, 30 May 1994 16:36:11 -0400
From: Seth Rothberg <SROTH@ucsvax.ucs.umass.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com
X-Vms-To: @com-priv
Several of you responsed to my post. I thought I'd summarize and answer
here:
I originally wrote:
| ...
|I work at a fairly wealthy public library in a fairly wealthy university
|town. Our endowment is big and funds about one third of our yearly budget.
|Just under two-thirds comes from property taxes. The rest comes from the
|state. We could not afford to pay, say, a $1000 a month out of our current
|budget. We'd need a subsidy of some sort to get and maintain connectivity.
Henry Scaffer responded:
> I really have trouble believing this - how big is the library's annual
>budget? What is its acquisitions budget? What is the size of the
>Director's discretionary budget? What % is $1,000/month out of the
>overall operations? (I understand the difficulty of taking $1,000/mo out
>of this year's ongoing budget - but I'm talking about the ease with with
>a mere $1,000/month should be included in next year's budget.) Even if
>the overall budget can't possibly be increased - is *everything* the
>library is doing today more important than a network connection would
>be? - for that is what you are saying.
> Best wishes,
>--henry schaffer
If you were implying that network connections are a low priority here,
you'd be right. We are moving in that direction, but slowly. It's hard
to justify the expense when we've had to cut our materials budget by about
~$30,000 for the upcoming fiscal year.
Barry Shein tells me, in no uncertain terms,
>Bullsh*t.
>Hey, they can fire you and that would more than pay for it!
>Ok, I'm being snippy. But there's a big difference between "not
>afford" and "not prioritize".
>I'm just curious, did they rub coal on your face before you posted?
Yeah, they could fire me. But I'm one of two people in the place who can
successfully type cd\dos at the C: prompt and get to the right subdirectory
--never mind using windows or setting up a network, which I'd love to do
<grin>. Seriously, we are minimally staffed now. At least one department is
understaffed.
Priorities, at this point, mean explaining to people why we're no longer open
on Sundays. Or why we don't have more copies of "K" is for Killer."
Matthew Kaufman informs me that in his town
>a full-time 28.8kbps connection to your library, over Centrex
>lines, would cost $102/month (INCLUDING the phone lines) (and that speed
>could go to 128kbps for $340/month, INCLUDING the phone lines)
Thanks, I appreciate the information. Then he goes on to assure me
>that if subsidies for IP connectivity had to come
>out of the budgets of IP providers, that price would go up by a LOT
>more than the direct cost of that subsidy, to cover such things as the
>increased administrative cost of figuring yet another tax and writing
>checks to the subsidy organization, and the cost of sending someone
>to Sacramento and Washington to make sure that it didn't go up any more
>in the future. Or, the business providing that sort of low-cost connectivity
>might just figure that now that there's mandated prices, there's no
>reason to try to be in competition with people like the local cable
>company, no matter how much less attractive their service might be
>to a consumer like you. Even if the mandated price turns out to be
>a lot closer to $1000/month than to $102/month.
>-matthew kaufman
> matthew@scruz.net
Well, I'm not going to argue whether subsidies should come out of IP
providers or not. I'm speaking about my local situation. Public
libraries get most of their support locally. I'd like it if our
library was voted sufficient funds to get connected and I'd like it
even more if we could then use a local business to do so. My connection
now is charity from the local university. It's not even a public
connection, which is really too bad.
To all: Thanks for your responses, thoughtful, informative, and otherwise.
Seth
Speaking for himself.
