----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Forwarded from NINCH list. The newsletter can also be found on the NINCH
Web site (http://www-ninch.cni.org/News/Newsletter3.html).
Judy
##############################################
NINCH
Networked Cultural Heritage Newsletter
No. 3
October 23, 1996
www-ninch.cni.org/news/news.html
====================================================================
A news and information digest for those working to preserve and
provide access to cultural heritage resources through networked digital
technology.
====================================================================
This newsletter is published through the NINCH-Announce listserv of the
National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage. You are welcome to
distribute it freely, with due acknowledgments. It is also available in a
hyperlinked version on the NINCH web site.
ACCESS: SCHOOLS, LIBRARIES....AND THE ARTS?
-------------------------------------------
Summary
1. THE FCC AND UNIVERSAL SERVICE
The Telecommunications Act's Universal Service provision mandates
discounted rates for telecommunications services to schools and
libraries. What services will be included and how discounts will be
implemented will be ruled on by the Federal Communications
Commission next May. Recommendations, based on public
comments, will be made to the FCC by a Joint Board on November
7, after which further comments will be elicited. Many support a
two-tiered E-Rate proposal, including free basic telecommunications
services, but industry is generally opposed to this suggestion.
2. INFORMATION RENAISSANCE: A GRASSROOTS APPROACH
One nonprofit organization organized an on-line seminar to
educate teachers and librarians about the Universal Service
provision to encourage broader participation in the FCC's process of
soliciting comments. Future seminars are planned.
3. NET DAY: A SUPPLEMENTAL LEVERAGED APPROACH
If industry is broadly opposed to the free provision of
telecommunications services to schools and libraries, many
businesses have contributed equipment and the time of employees
to NetDay, a national attempt to wire all the schools in the country
for Internet access.
4. OPEN STUDIO: A SMALL BEGINNING FOR ARTS ACCESS
The National Endowment for the Arts, in collaboration with the
Benton Foundation, has announced a $1 million annual program
to provide access sites and training to artists and arts groups in
every state of the nation.
-----------------------------
THE FCC AND UNIVERSAL SERVICE
By next May, the FCC will rule on how the country will assist
schools and public libraries in paying for telecommunications
services.
The Snowe-Rockefeller-Kerrey amendment to the new
Telecommunications Act mandated discounted rates for K-12
schools, public libraries and rural health care providers but did not
spell out the details.
The FCC has called for comments twice this year on which services
should be included under discounted rates and how the program
would be implemented. A Federal-State Joint Board has been
charged to make recommendations to the FCC, based on these
comments, by November 7. The eight-person board, organized to
design the implementation of the Universal Service policies in the
new Telecommunications Act comprises three FCC officials, four
state utility commissioners and Missouri's public counsel as
consumer representative.
THE E-RATE
One of the most popular, yet contentious, proposals before the
Board is for an "E" (for Education) rate. Rep. Edward Markey (D-
MA) first proposed this as a simple free rate for schools and public
libraries, in April 1996, but it has now been considerably elaborated.
The proposal has two tiers: for basic and advanced
telecommunications services. The basic package would include
telephone service and a T1 Internet connection. Any school district
in this tier would create a technology plan to incorporate basic
telephone and Internet services into the curriculum. The district
would then solicit bids from local telecommunications providers to
fulfill the needs outlined in the plan. The winning bid would be the
one combining the best functionality and price. Monies from the
Universal Service Fund (USF) would support the cost of
installation of the telephone wire and the monthly charges for the
services.
The second tier addresses more advanced and special services,
allowing schools and libraries to be eligible for discounts reflecting
"the best available commercial rate." Videoconferencing, for
example, would be an advanced service that a school or library
could receive at the lowest price a provider charges its biggest
customers. Although there would be no support from the USF in
this tier, those schools and libraries in high-cost and low-income
areas would receive deeper discounts for advanced services that
would be paid for from the Fund.
Full details of the E-rate are available at
www.ntia.doc.gov/new.html.
President Clinton strongly supports this proposal, declaring it a "big
deal," (New York Times, Oct 21, D5), as does FCC chairman, Reed
Hundt and the National Telecommunications and Information
Administration. The NTIA's comments submitted to the FCC October
10, outlining a framework for implementing the E-Rate, are available
at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fccfilings/cc96_45furthercom.htm
This summer, Vice President Gore and Education Secretary Riley
went further in calling for a free package of services to include e-
mail, Internet access and video conferencing.
FCC COMMENTS: WHAT SHOULD BE INCLUDED?
According to FARNET, comments received by the FCC on which
services should be eligible for discounts ranged from the U.S.
Telephone Association's refusal to countenance anything other
than current "Plain Old Telephone Service" to the American
Library Association's call for "any telecommunications service
offered commercially under tariff or through contract."
Regarding the issue of whether inside wiring of K-12 schools should
be included, comments again were somewhat predictable. Industry
was generally opposed, while the American Library Association felt
that everything should be considered, including "ancillary
modifications to permit installation." However, most providers of
inside wiring will not be telecommunications providers and would
thus not be eligible for reimbursement from the Universal Service
Fund. The chances of this provision's inclusion in the Board's
recommendations seem slim.
Another contentious issue was the resale prohibition of the Act,
which could prevent school districts from sharing networks or
extending access to public libraries and other community groups.
Finally, there are several questions about mechanisms for
distributing discounts, ways of determining discounts and whether
deeper discounts should be granted economically disadvantaged
schools.
The Benton Foundation has compiled useful "Summaries of
Comments Filed in Universal Service Proceedings on Universal
Service," available at http://www.benton.org/cgi-
bin/lite/Summaries/summaries.html. The complete comments
can be downloaded from the FCC web site:
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Comments/univs
erv_comm.html
COST
The Administration estimates that the cost of providing
telecommunications access to schools and libraries would be $2.5
billion spread over five years. Currently, the discounts would be
paid for by telephone companies who would pass the costs on to
their customers: $6 a year for the average phone bill, according to
the Consumer Federation of America (New York Times, Oct. 21, D
5)
Congressman Major Owens (D-NY), in testimony before the Joint
Board, pointed out that this was less than the price of one aircraft
carrier and was probably not out-of-line with the country's
investment in the development of the intercontinental railroad.
These estimates include the current cost of T1 lines and other
services that could dramatically drop with the increased demand of
110,000 schools and 16,000 libraries. The Benton Foundation
reminds us that these estimates are dwarfed by the current
Universal Service Fund and access fee support for local phone
systems, estimated at between $5 and $18 billion a year.
Nicholas von Hoffman (The Architectural Digest, Oct. 96, p. 130)
considers this sum to be equivalent to that spent by Andrew
Carnegie during the great library building period. However, apart
from capital costs, there are the costs of sustainability and of user
support. According to a senior vice president of the New York
Public Library's Research Libraries, "our equipment is on a three-
year, $6,000 replacement cycle. If people are using
things like the World Wide Web, we need one staff member out on
the floor for every 20 workstations in use... Right now we have 250
workstations for the public, so one staff member for every 20
workstations becomes a major investment." (Edupage, Sept. 17)
PREDICTIONS
FARNET considers it likely that the Joint Board will recommend
conservative action to the FCC, even though the education and
library community are pressing for more expansive movement.
One consideration is that the Act requires discounts only from
"telecommunications providers," common carrier providers, not
Internet Service Providers or cable companies, for example, and
only common carriers have much chance of being reimbursed for
the discount from the Universal Service Fund.
Sources: FARNET Washington Update, July 12; New York Times, Oct. 21 D5;
Benton Foundation; Edupage, Sept. 17
-----------------------
INFORMATION RENAISSANCE
In an effort to broaden the constituency of those most likely to
respond to the FCC's request for comments , Information
Renaissance recently organized an experimental five-week online
seminar on Universal Service/Network Democracy. Information
Renaissance (http://info-ren.pitt.edu) is a Pittsburgh based nonprofit
that promotes the development of regional networking infrastructure
in support of education, community development and economic
revitalization.
The point of the exercise was to educate, galvanize and involve
more on-the-ground practitioners in the FCC comments process. As
the organizers put it: "By surveying individual participants, we have
come to the conclusion that our group represents over 2000 person-
years of networking experience. This probably represents a greater
level of networking expertise than was contained in the hundreds
of industry-sponsored submissions to the FCC on the subject of
Universal Service."
Initial feedback indicates that it is important to continue such
educational activity to ensure that Federal officials developing rules
for implementing Universal Service have access to the opinions of
those who are engaged with telecommunications technology in
local schools and libraries. A similar seminar may well take place at
the time of the release of the Joint Board's comments, when there
will again be time for public comments.
Information Renaissance organizers point out that there will be a
mandated review of the success of the Telecommunications Act in
providing advanced services to schools and librarians and public
discussion of this topic could be invaluable in helping the FCC to
ascertain what has happened in the field.
-------
NET DAY
As a supplement to the FCC's efforts and the E-Rate campaign,
NetDay is an opportunity for corporations and ordinary citizens to
volunteer and to work together to wire all the nation's classrooms.
The first NetDay occurred in California, March 9, 1996, when over
20,000 volunteers and 200 businesses installed six million feet of
wire to connect classrooms in 2,600 schools. Throughout the entire
month of March 4,000 schools were wired, leaving 9,000 still to be
completed in California.
National NetDay96 (www.netday96.com/) was launched September
26. This fall the goal is to connect five schoolrooms and the library
in every school. There are actually several NetDays--different series
of Saturdays running from September through November. Each
state has a home-page, accessed from a clickable map on the
national NetDay page. Follow-up appears generally well-organized:
each school is encouraged to keep its own on-line NetDay diary and
build a technology plan (entirely consonant with the FCC's plans)
(http://www.netday96.com/whats_next_usa/).
California has an extraordinary zoomable organizing map used for
its second NetDay on October 12. "The First Visual Accounting of
Technology in California Schools,"
(http://www.netday96.com/map/) shows where help is needed. A
potential volunteer organizer can zoom from a map of the entire
state down to street level showing how to get to a school that needs
help. Once people sign up for a given school the red dots indicating
"help!" automatically change through yellow indicating "1-4
volunteers," to green showing that over four volunteers have
signed up.
NetDay News (http://www.schoolwire.org/), this project's lively
newsletter, is currently organizing an e-mail campaign to the FCC to
adopt the E-Rate proposal
(http://www.mightymedia.com/netday/netday.cfm).
Principally the invention of John Gage of Sun Microsystems,
NetDay received a boost from the Clinton Administration when it
organized a meeting on educational technology in California
schools in September, 1995. NetDay quickly became the centerpiece
for the President's Educational Technology Initiative
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/edtech.html ) incorporating several
other initiatives (including a Technology Literacy Challenge,
Virtual Office Hours). Details of these and other projects can also be
found at the web page for the Department of Education's
Technology Initiatives
(http://www.ed.gov/Technology/index.html).
----------------------------
OPEN STUDIO: THE ARTS ONLINE
In all of this activity, you will have noticed that the arts have not
been mentioned. One of the goals of NINCH is that museums, arts
centers and arts institutions be included in such access programs.
One new project that will help to do this is a collaboration between
the National Endowment for the Arts and the Benton Foundation.
Named "Open Studio: The Arts Online," the program will establish
public points of access to the Internet at arts and cultural
institutions throughout the country. In addition, critically
important training programs will enable artists and arts institutions
to become effective information providers on the World Wide
Web.
Budgeted at $1 million annually, Open Studio: The Arts Online
(http://www.openstudio.org/) is designed to explore the tools and
techniques that will help arts and cultural organizations actively
participate in the networked environment. The project will
promote access to the Internet and to arts and cultural information
through a two-part process:
1. One hundred Access Sites will be created, offering free Internet
access for artists and the public in arts organizations, libraries and
community centers. Two sites in each state and territory of the
United States will be selected to maximize geographic, income, and
ethnic diversity and each identified site will receive a small award
(up to $4,000) to establish public Internet access in their community.
The first set of sites has just been announced; a second set will be
announced in February:
Beacon Street Gallery, Chicago, IL
Cambridge Community TV (CCTV), Cambridge, MA
DiverseWorks Artspace, Houston, TX
Hult Center for the Performing Arts, Eugene, OR
Lewis & Clark Library, Helena, MT
Metro/Dade Cultural Affairs Council, Miami, FL
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN
Schomburg Library, New York, NY
Telluride Institute/InfoZone, Telluride, CO
Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, Topeka, KS
911 Media Arts Center, Seattle, WA
2. A system of community web mentoring sites will be established
to provide arts organizations and individual artists with the basic
skills needed for online communications and electronic publishing.
Each mentoring site will receive support (up to $35,000) to train
nonprofit arts organizations and individual artists. These trainees,
in turn, will each be asked to train another organization or artist in
an "each one teach one" strategy.
Three pilot mentor sites have already been selected, others will be
announced in February, 1997:
Break Away Technologies, Los Angeles, CA
Center for Arts Management & Technology, Pittsburgh, PA
Charlotte's Web, Charlotte, NC
Organizations may apply to be either access or mentoring sites. The
deadline for applications is December 8, 1996 and the
announcement of award recipients will be made by February 1997.
===============================================================
David L. Green
Executive Director
NATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR A NETWORKED CULTURAL HERITAGE
21 Dupont Circle, NW
Washington DC 20036
www-ninch.cni.org
[log in to unmask]
202/296-5346 202/872-0884 fax
==============================================================
|
