Two Galecia clients (possibly more!) are now offering mobile hotspots that patrons can borrow. These hotspots come with an unlimited plan so you can take them anywhere and get connected to the Internet.  Both libraries report the new service is wildly popular!

Sonoma County Library (https://sonomalibrary.org/) has 500 units available.  Their program, SonomaFi, is a pilot program so far.  Funded from Measure Y sales tax funds. The service provider is Verizon.  Each hotspot is available for 14 days and if the borrower neglects to return it, the service is deactivated (which evidently helps get the units returned promptly!)  

Sonoma County has also created an excellent video showing patrons how to use their HotSpots - check out the nice cases that are included!  https://www.youtube.com/supported_browsers?next_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DAawPH22CibE&feature=youtu.be

Charleston County (https://www.ccpl.org) is offering the same program but with service from Sprint. So far no groovy videos. Their program is courtesy of a grant from the South Carolina State Library.

With the news this week that the Trump Administration is trying to destroy the Institute for Museum and Library Services - for the third year in a row - library advocates across the United States snapped into action.  ALA fired up a "send an email to your representative" tool as well as an interactive table for looking up your representative's and senator's respective votes on past library funding bills.  As BookRiot says, not hyperbolically: "[d]efunding the IMLS would effectively end all federal funding of public libraries."

Are you going to build a community digital project, like a new online app or map for your city or region?  Make sure to check out the project toolkit from the US Census Bureau's "The Opportunity Project" for some great tips and resources!  The toolkit includes helpful explanations of the chief steps of planning, building, and supporting a digital product or service - and since it's provided by the Census Bureau, there are tons of links to data sources from federal, state, and local sources.

Something big is coming in 2020 - and we're not talking about the presidential election or the Olympics... it's the decennial US census!  And libraries have a critical role to play to ensure that their communities are represented in the census data, and the resulting program dollars that will flow.  Thankfully, the US Census Bureau and other organizations are working together to help everyone be counted fairly.

You can create simple online maps using free tools like Google's My Maps, but for serious collections of local landmarks, or historical/cultural resources, you'll need something more powerful, such as the custom platform that we built for Chicago Ancestors.  I recently came across the open source platform "Arches," popularized by a digital history project in Los Angeles, that provides powerful geodata management capabilities perfect for digital humanities projects.

Remember earlier this summer when your email inbox and the headers of your favorite websites were chock full of notices about "Updated Privacy Policies?"  You may also remember that this flurry of privacy policy updates was due to a new European Union law going into effect that controlled how companies could collect data about European citizens.  Since many Internet services are global by nature, some Americans also benefit from these new data policies, although American companies serving American citizens obviously don't need to abide by the EU regulations.

Ever been to a "hackathon" -- a gathering of technologists committed to working on a short-term project, usually a couple of days?  Imagine two dozen programmers, designers, and specialists locked in a room for 2 days with laptops, snacks, and caffeine, all focused on prototyping an innovative app for a good cause.  Learning, sharing, and pure geekery ensue!