On Line, Off Limits: Chicago's Poor are Finding that the Information Superhighway doesn't Connect with Their Neighborhoods

By: Mary AbowdTwo years ago, 11-year-old Calvin Garner had never touched a computer or heard of the Internet. Today, at 13, he's known as the local expert, teaching his friends how to go online from his dimly lit bedroom on the fifth floor of the Henry Homer housing development on Chicago's near West Side. Calvin's fascination with computer technology began with a chance meeting with educator Ben Teifeld at a local youth center. The two became friends and have been meeting at least once a week ever since.

Together, they explore the Internet, talk to more than 40 online friends, and try to generate interest in computers among other Homer youth.

"If one kid teaches another kid, that's the first step," said Teifeld, education director at the Horner Association of Men, a social service organization. "And this is already happening."

But it isn't happening fast enough.

Chicago is suffering from an information gap. Despite the efforts of community groups, educators and the public library system, the much ballyhooed information superhighway has taken a detour around some communities.

"In a city the size of Chicago, with the poverty areas that we have, there can be an information rich and an information poor society," said Alice Calabrese, executive director of the Chicago Library System, one of 12 state offices that serve public, university, law school and other libraries. "Our children need to have these skills, and often the only place to go for this is the public library," she said.

In a six-month investigation, The Chicago Reporter examined the role of libraries in delivering information technology to the community, and the barriers that keep residents from using computers and online services. Not surprisingly, the problem is generally worse in Chicago than in the suburbs, and is compounded in the city's poor and minority neighborhoods. Among the findings:

• Even after recent gains, Chicago's public libraries offer one computer for every 20,469 residents, compared with one computer for every 13,286 residents in suburban libraries.

• Computers only will benefit those who come to the library. In 1993, branch libraries in predominantly white wards loaned more than three books and other materials for every resident, compared with less than two books for every resident in black and Latino wards. In the suburbs, public libraries loaned 9.4 books and other materials per resident.

• Of the 1.4 million people in the six county area with the lowest levels of literacy, 80.9 percent live in Chicago.

• A survey by the Metropolitan Chicago Information Center last winter found that 41 percent of whites in the six-county area have home computers, compared with 19 percent of blacks and 18 percent of Latinos.

Beyond these barriers lurks an even greater problem: recent media accounts that some blacks perceive that the Internet, and other online technologies, are for whites only.

But reports that blacks have little or no interest in computers fail to tell the whole story, said Pierre Clark, managing director of NeighborTech Inc., an agency advocating technology access and training for low-income communities.

"African Americans have a great deal of interest in technology and always have had, but the real issue is access," he said. "Is the technology made accessible to us in the same way it's made accessible for everybody else?"

Data World
In Chicago, the battle of the technology gap is being waged throughout the Chicago Public Library, where officials are trying to turn branch libraries into community centers for those who cannot afford a computer, a modem and software.

Those efforts are beginning to pay off: Chicago's 83 public library branches now have 136 computers available for public use, the Reporter's analysis shows.

That falls short of the 337 computers available in the 183 public libraries in suburban Cook and the collar counties, but it's still the kind of progress that has Chicago Public Library Commissioner Mary A. Dempsey talking boldly about the future.

"Access to information is the cornerstone of a public library and the cornerstone of democracy," Dempsey said. "Today, it's an online database world. We have a responsibility to find a way to make the Internet available. We certainly are headed in that direction."

Since Dempsey became commissioner in January 1994, state grants have been used to upgrade computerized card catalogues at all the branch libraries and buy staff computers for those branches that did not have them.

Thirty-one of the 83 branches now have computers available for public use. In April, the library set up pilot sites in seven branches across the city, where patrons can use the Internet free. In the past year, the Library System has used a $75,000 state grant to provide additional computer training for 400 Chicago librarians.

The library also is spending money to renovate branches and build new ones, but some libraries remain little more than storefronts. "We'll never have every branch online," said Lois Berger, a library spokeswoman.

The jewel of the system remains the downtown Harold Washington Library Center, where residents come from all over the city to use one of 30 personal computers, as well as two terminals with Internet access.

Englewood resident Lolita Swopes said she came downtown to work on her resume because "the computers were easy to use," adding that "they don't have a database in my neighborhood so I come here."

The Reporter surveyed libraries in the six-county area to see how many had computerized card catalogues, a statewide database for interlibrary loans, personal computers for public use, and reference librarians with access to the Internet.

All but 23 of the 183 suburban libraries are computerized, the Reporter found. Half of the 23 libraries are in southern Cook County; seven are in towns where minorities make up more than 25 percent of the population.

"We're behind what others are doing because we had to replace our roof," said Barbara Paul, administrative librarian at the Chicago Heights Free Public Library. The librarians are "excited to search on the Internet," she said. "We can't wait to finally come up to date."

Sixty suburban libraries provide all of these services. Of those, 21 are in suburban Cook County, and eight have minority populations greater than 25 percent.

"We're in a sophisticated area of the country," said Carole Medal, executive director of the northwest suburban Rolling Meadows Public Library. "Public libraries are very developed. It's not keeping up with the Joneses; it's providing what the community expects and demands."

Comfort Level
Teifeld of the Homer Association describes his efforts as "small and modest." But he said his work with Calvin Garner and other community members represents one way to bring the information age to those who have little knowledge, or inclination to learn about computers.

The association is creating a public access computing facility, where residents have more opportunity to use the Internet. And Teifeld is working with other near West Side groups to develop a network of computer-literate organizations.

"Every single place that could possibly be a point of access is important," he said. "It's crucial that people with different needs and comfort levels have places where they can go."

That includes the libraries, but in Chicago, some branches get more traffic than others. The 32 branches serving majority black wards and the 31 in majority white wards serve roughly the same number of people, and each group has 43 computers available for public use. But the branches in white neighborhoods are doing more business, the Reporter's analysis shows.

In 1993, the libraries in the 21 predominantly white wards circulated 3.4 million books and other materials, or 3.22 for every resident. Libraries in the 19 majority black wards circulated 1.95 million materials, or 1.75 per person.

Nestled between two worlds, the Blackstone branch caters to educated, middle class patrons from Hyde Park and the poorer residents of South Kenwood.

Librarian Cathryn Baker said the Internet will only widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

"To connect to the Internet... it costs money," Baker said. "Poor people don't have any money. And in a lot of cases, they haven't been given the kind of education that will encourage them to venture into those cyberworlds. They're scared just trying to make it through day to day."

The 11 libraries in the city's seven Latino wards had a circulation of 736,088, or 1.89 materials per person.

Residents in minority communities will see libraries as vital institutions only when computer use is linked to community survival, said Abdul Alkalimat, owner of Twenty-First Century Books, 607 E. 43rd St., and a frequent lecturer on issues of community computing.

"If you have a community with deteriorating housing, economic instability and job loss, the principal issues have to do with their survival," he said.

"If the library becomes a source for jobs and housing, then it becomes an important part of every community."

But Library Commissioner Dempsey said that's exactly what the branch Libraries are doing: reaching more people through non-traditional means, by creating male mentoring programs, by producing and writing plays and, of course, by offering computers.

"Circulation figures are somewhat misleading and do not always reflect the true activity of what is going on in that library," Dempsey said. "Not every child who came to reading [hour] that day checked out a book."

"I like to think we're very non-intimidating," she said. "We don't ask you where you're from, if you read, if you're a citizen, we just say 'Come in the door.’"

Street Signs
Librarians on the far North Side are groping around to find the best combination between technology and solving the literacy problem," said Kang Chiu, president of Friends of the Rogers Park Library.

If people are illiterate, they don't use the library's computers, he said. "They're still having problems reading the street signs."

Low levels of literacy may be the single largest barrier keeping people out of the library-and off the computer. In the metropolitan area, most of those people live in Chicago, the Reporter's analysis shows.

The Reporter assigned literacy "scores" to each census tract in the six-county region by combining three measures provided by the U.S. Census: last grade completed in school; English proficiency of non-native speakers; and median family income. These factors are commonly used as predictors of literacy, experts say.

Chicagoans account for eight out of every 10 people who live in the worst quarter tracts for literacy, the Reporter found. Of those, 40.1 percent were Latino, 29.8 percent were white, 25.1 percent were black and 4.5 were Asian.

More than four out of every five Latinos in Chicago live in a neighborhood with the lowest level of literacy.

In the suburbs, whites make up 45.5 percent of those living in the worst tracts, compared to 34.6 percent Latinos, 17.9 percent blacks and 1.6 percent Asians.

Dempsey said the Chicago libraries work with literacy organizations and employ "many foreign-speaking librarians, to reach more people."

In Elgin, literacy problems have not stopped the public library from forging ahead with technology.

"There's a growing disparity between those who are literate and use the public library and people from semiliterate families who do not use the library," said Dan Zack, director of Gall Borden Library in the northwest suburb. "The problem is trying to break that cycle of non-usage and non-appreciation."

In 1974, Borden became the first public library in Illinois to automate its circulation system.

"The technology is of great benefit to that sector that uses the library," Zack said. "Unfortunately those who are from semiliterate families are left out."

Working with a local literacy organization, the library has been stocked with Spanish language materials and has created programs to interest kids.

"Computers can be a tool for literacy for children," Zack said. "If communities like Elgin don't keep trying to bridge the gap, we're in for trouble."

Home Computing
In the long run, the cheapest and best way to bring technology into people's lives is to bring it into their homes.

"If you don't have a computer at home, you're really lost," said Marcia Dellenbach, who directs the Chicago library's online services. "We want everyone across the city to have access."

But the information gap reaches into the home. In its 1995 survey, the Metropolitan Chicago Information Center found that 34 percent of all households in the six-county area have a personal computer: 41 percent of suburban households and 23 percent of city homes.

Beyond the public libraries, dozens of community groups are trying to bring the new technologies a little closer to home.

"NeighborNet," a computer bulletin board system set up by Pierre Clark's NeighborTech, allows neighborhood residents and organizations to share crucial information about community development, housing and jobs, he said. The group also has donated used computers to local organizations.

Calvin is doing his part. Though his computer came by way of a Chicago White Sox donation to the Homer Association, Calvin saved up enough money to buy his modem and pays the $20 monthly Internet fee out of his own pocket.

"The Internet is a good place for younger kids to learn more things, instead of just reading books," he said. "You also learn from the people you talk to."

Calvin acknowledged that most of his friends "aren't as interested as I am," but said he is more than willing to show them how to "surf" the Internet.

"This is the way it has to go," said Teifeld of the Horner Association. "The kids who learn have to become the teachers. The community has to take it over, otherwise it won't last."

Tim Hardy of Glenbard Graphics Inc. provided assistance with the computerized database analysis.

Interns Jody Campbell, Shruti Date, Manuel Herrera, Loti Lessner, Nicolette McDavid, Natalie Moore and Lukas Wallraff helped research this article.