By April 8, the Aurora Public Library will have 17 new personal computers thanks to a grant from the Gates Foundation.
Six of the computers will be solely for public access at the main library downtown, Library Director Eva Luckinbill said. The other 11 are for a computer lab that will train area library personnel and local residents, she said.
As part of the grant, four staff members will be sent to Seattle for a week of training. They will learn to run the lab, which will offer training in Internet access, e-mail use and word processing. When lab computers are not being used for classes, they will be available to the public.
“We feel very fortunate to have been chosen as one of the six training lab sites” in Illinois, Luckinbill said.
“It’s going to extend beyond the library,” she said of the new technology. “We’re going to share this with other organizations, and it’s our intent to make this accessible as much as possible to all kinds of organizations within the city.”
The Gates Foundation, under its U.S. Library Program, is donating computers to libraries in areas where poverty exceeds 10 percent. The aim is to bridge the digital divide.
With a $250 million commitment, the program so far has donated 28,000 computers to 6,000 libraries and trained 8,100 librarians, according to the foundation’s Internet site.
The downtown library currently has about 16 public access computers, but some are outdated and will need to be retired or devoted to simpler applications when the new computers arrive, Luckinbill said.
