With this week’s modernization of the FCC’s Lifeline, the impact of libraries in this program is a crucial discussion, though I’m still trying to understand how community broadband can be used in the program.

Don Means, Director of the library advocacy group Gigabit Libraries Network, explains how libraries can facilitate broadband planning, financing and the marketing of the networks once they are build. Looking at the public networks that have been built, some communities could have improved the impact of some of these investments if they had utilized the existing network of libraries.

Libraries and their staff probably are one of the most under-appreciated and underused resources in the community broadband movement. Libraries reach out and touch virtually everyone in their communities across the entire economic spectrum, they know a lot about planning community projects and quite a few have overseen the buildouts of the fastest broadband infrastructure in their communities.