The Enoch Pratt Free Library recently submitted a $6.3 million proposal to the City of Baltimore for American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds.
The library hopes to use the funding to implement a two-year plan to provide more digital services and help close the city’s digital divide.
This year’s ARPA provided $641 million to the City of Baltimore.
Recent ARPA allocations include $50 million to the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement for violence prevention and $80 million to the Baltimore City Health Department for COVID-19 prevention and outreach to vulnerable communities.
The Enoch Pratt Free Library’s plan involves expanding existing programs that loan hotspots and laptops and provide outdoor Wi-Fi.
The proposal also calls for the establishment of a new staff position, digital navigator. Digital navigators would provide visitors with one-on-one tech support.
The plan would also create two youth tech centers and improve existing public computer spaces.
Libraries play a significant role in providing free access to the internet, particularly in cities where access is vastly unequal.
In Baltimore City, 41.3% of households do not subscribe to wireline internet and 31.9% lack a desktop or laptop computer, according to an Abell Foundation report published earlier this year.
The report also shows that access to the internet falls along racial and socioeconomic lines.
It found that 40% of Maryland residents, or 206,000 households, without high-speed internet are African American.
The Enoch Pratt Free Library’s proposal labels the library as “the community anchor for digital equity.”
The library has 2,193,109 Wi-Fi sessions and 1,031,070 public computer sessions annually. It also has 72,064 annual computer lab users.
