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December 23, 2010
An article in an October edition of the Economist highlighted the increased use of free internet access in libraries in the USA.
The report suggested that this growth was a direct result of the recession, as people chose to forgo the cost of a home internet connection as a cost cutting measure. A high proportion of these new users were also recently unemployed job seekers.
As businesses are also looking to reduce costs, many are asking for online employment applications, and that library staff were increasingly having to offer help to applicants unfamiliar with using computers or making formal job applications.
We’d be interested to know whether library staff have seen something similar and how you deal with it?
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All the time! We are told that the Job Centre won’t accept paper CVs (they have to be sent by email) and are telling people to go to their local library to use the People’s Network. We are getting lots of people who have never used a computer trying to produce a CV, set up an email account, send a message with an attachment, print copies and save their new document to a disc or USB data drive (which they buy from us because they didn’t know they needed it). On a quiet day we can offer some assistance, but often we don’t have the time/staff to look after these customers properly. It’s hard seeing unhappy, stressed people put in difficult situations and not be able to help.
I totally agree with Kim. We are having the same problems.I am also in the situation of having a daughter who has just been made redundant from her first job and madly looking for a new one, and wherever she goes,to hand in her CV is told,’look online’! which can be very frustrating, when you have made the effort to print off your cv and take it along with you.
I think this is a trend at any library near a job centre, certainly we’ve seen an increase in jobseekers using the PN at Gosport and Fareham. Unfortunately they are often inexperienced and there is often not time to be able to help (as Kim identifies). There’s a strong expectation from these customers that we will be able to give them dedicated time (often fostered by the job centre!) and it’s a difficult balance. Library staff aren’t IT tutors (generally) and it’s someimes tricky to get this across and not disappoint – especially when IT skills across our staff are varied.
Another trend is the use of wi-fi in discovery centres and libraries that have it by small businesses – there are individuals at Gosport who are running their businesses with our wi-fi! Good for visitor figures and the economy, though not something I expected to see.