Library Helps Youth Sign On to Internet

Senior Reference Librarian Marie Kaneko is determined to make sure the much-heralded information superhighway doesn’t leave some travelers in the dust.

“It’s the information-poor who will be left behind in the future,” said Kaneko, who heads the city’s Central Library.

“That’s why it’s good to get kids hooked on the Internet at an early age.”

In Commerce, a city that is 91% Latino, that means increasing awareness about the potential for multicultural and multilingual access to the burgeoning global computer network. With that goal in mind, the library’s Bristow Park branch hosted a free information session last week to discuss Spanish-language resources on the Internet.

Expanding bilingual access to the Internet is the result, in part, of a project funded earlier this year by the Federal Library Services and Construction Act.

The project provides 182 participating libraries with equipment, training and 100 hours of Internet connect time.

In each library, a lead staff member and community resident are responsible for experimenting with a variety of public uses of the Internet, training others and sharing their experiences with each other and other libraries.

Using a modem, printer and a personal computer, interested parties at a recent information session learned how to tap into a database with information on topics ranging from Mayan archeological digs to Mexican American soirees in Torrance to the latest news on the rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico.

Bert Gallego, a social studies teacher with Montebello Unified Schools who attended the session, said he has come across such contrasting information as gossip between people living on different continents and a brilliant essay on recent political events.

“There aren’t any standards yet, so you just don’t know what you’re going to get when you access a given database,” Gallego said.

Still, Gallego said, it is essential for as many people as possible to get access to the flood of information available on the Internet and other computer networks.

“At this point the Internet is just anarchy,” Gallego said.

“There’s a race right now to acquire equal access to information, and it’s clear who’s winning--those with enough money to have computers in their homes.”