Thanks to a grant from the Central New York Community Foundation, Oneida Public Library is one of six public libraries in Madison and Onondaga counties to offer its patrons the chance to borrow Hotspot Kits, which contain a Verizon Jetpack or wifi hotspot plus a Chromebook.
Through the foundation grant to the Central New York Library Resources Council headquartered in Syracuse, the OPL now has three Hotspot Kits to lend to patrons in good standing for home access to the Internet. The lending period is three weeks per kit, with no renewals.
The Hotspot Kit program is intended for people without Internet access at home to become familiar with the latest communications technology and to learn how to use the Internet safely and productively. To be eligible to check out a Hotspot Kit, a patron must be at 18 years of age or older; have a valid library card and no outstanding fines; and agree to participate in basic technical training before borrowing and to fill out loan and return surveys.
The Chromebook, by design, offers access to the Internet only. It has no file saving capacity. Instead, to save items or documents, patrons who borrow the kits will be introduced by library staff to the use of thumb drives and the free cloud services of Google and Microsoft via email accounts.
Patrons interested in borrowing the kits must sign up in person at the OPL circulation desk, which has a Hotspot Kit Waiting List. No online requests will be honored. Once a kit is returned, the borrower is free to sign up again for a kit.
Because the Hotspot Kit equipment is quite valuable, the OPL will not be charging the usual fines for items returned late or lost. Instead, a borrower will be charged $100 apiece for a hotspot and a Chromebook that are lost or have not been returned within one week of being overdue. After a kit is overdue one week, CLRC will disable the Chromebook and ask Verizon to terminate the hotspot’s wifi connection.
“The point,” said OPL Assistant Director Tom Murray, “is not to penalize the Hotspot Kit borrower with heavy fines but rather to make the kit available to as many other people in the community in need of Internet access as possible. Even if the borrowed hotspot or the Chromebook becomes damaged or dysfunctional, we still want it back in a timely fashion and won’t charge any damage fees. With the IT expertise of CLRC on call, in most cases we can get the devices repaired pretty quickly and send them out the door with another borrower.”
For more information on the Hotspot Kits, stop by the Oneida Library, 220 Broad St., or call 315-363-3050.