Wee-Fi

When the D.C. Public Library announced the arrival of wireless Internet at DCPL locations across the city in September, only a single neighborhood branch out of more than 20 found itself uninvited to the hip Wi-Fi party: the Deanwood Kiosk.

The hot-spot snub shouldn’t have surprised anyone who’s visited the diminutive, 150-square-foot hexagonal outpost on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue NE—it looks more like an Italian-ice stand than a city library. Yet despite the fact that the branch claims just one table and a couple of chairs for patrons, DCPL spokesperson Monica Lewis says wireless Internet could reach the kiosk within a few months.

“A broadband line is what’s needed,” says Lewis. “We’ll probably do it sometime in 2007, and probably in the earlier part of the year.”

For now, the kiosk gets by with just a single computer helmed by branch manager Lisa Hook. “There’s no card catalog, but they [DCPL] provide me with the laptop to look up things that visitors need,” Hook says. “It’s pretty good. I do have Internet.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 at 3:15 pm and is filed under D.C. Public Library, Deanwood, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.