On Thursday, Sept. 11, 2023, every public library in Illinois received an email from the Secretary of State’s office asking for their input via a critical statewide survey on broadband access and usage in their library. If you misplaced the email, you can find all the essential information here on the IHLS website. This page includes the PDF instructions and the link to the survey. This survey and the results will be used directly by the Secretary of State’s office to help justify the need for libraries to have better access to broadband in Illinois. So, it’s crucial that your input be heard! This is especially true for our most rural and isolated libraries—you are critical to achieving digital equity!
We’ll use this page to compile a list of frequently asked questions as they come up. However, our most crucial advice is this:
- Download or print the PDF document you received with the email (also available here).
- Answer all the questions on that paper or in a separate Word document.
- When you’re done, go to the survey link and transfer all your answers over from the PDF.
We recommend this first-draft method because you can’t leave the survey and return to edit your answers, and question 13 asks you to record speed tests taken at different times of the day.
If you have any questions, please reach out to Troy Brown via email.
Frequently Asked Questions
Below, you'll find a few FAQs. We'll continue to add and update these in the coming weeks.
- On question 13, it asks me about internet speeds. How do I respond?
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The advertised speed of your internet is what is “promised” to you by your provider. Oftentimes, it’s advertised as 30 megabits-per-second download and five megabits-per-second upload. Those are what we call “advertised” speeds. It’s what you subscribe to from the provider.
The question goes on to ask about what your internet speeds are when you open, at midday, and when you close. These are easy to gather, and you can use the link provided to take that measurement from a library computer at those three times of the day. Just write down each result on your printout.
Note: When you click “Start Test,” it will return three values on the left: download speed, upload speed, and latency. We only care about the first two (download speed and upload speed) for this survey.See this video for further assistance:
- I’m not sure how to answer questions like #20, where it’s asking for "rarely, sometimes, or often."
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This is purely subjective and comes down to your opinion. Do you often have people complaining about the internet? Does it slow down when there are a lot of people? We really want to know that. Here’s your chance to tell us. Please don’t be shy; tell us how great or terrible it is. That’s precisely what we want to know.
Here's more information:
