Today the Gates Foundation made nearly $3.4 million in grants to bolster Internet connections in libraries in five states.

Public libraries received grants for plans to improve and maintain Internet connections in Arkansas ($735,207), Kansas ($363,099), Massachusetts ($367,789), New York ($947,517), and Virginia ($977,468). The states were selected because they had a high number of libraries without high-speed Internet access that were struggling to increase their bandwidth for patrons.

Even in tech-savvy Seattle, I have gone into public libraries and found there's a waiting list to get online using library computers, which patrons with library cards can use for 90 minutes per day.

The Gates Foundation said it is giving technical and consulting assistance to 14 other states, including Washington, to help their libraries develop broadband proposals to compete for federal broadband stimulus funds.

For about 40 percent of Americans who have no Internet access at home, library connections provide the only way they can check their email, search for jobs and get all kinds of basic information that is increasingly available in digital form only. Sadly the country where the Internet was invented has fallen behind the rest of the industrialized world in broadband deployment.

Libraries are hard pressed to keep up with growing demand, especially for higher bandwidth.

A study by the American Library Association found that 60 percent of all libraries say their current Internet speed is insufficient.

Nationwide broadband is the longer term solution. The Gates Foundation provided an analysis to the FCC in October that estimated the cost of installing fiber optic networks across 80 percent of schools, hospitals and other large institutions at $5 billion to $10 billion.