Nicole D. Alemanne and Lauren H. Mandel to Present Paper on Broadband Needs Assessments in Rural Anchor Institutions at the iSchools iConference 2012

Lauren H. Mandel, ResearchCoordinator, and Nicole D. Alemanne, Research Associate of the InformationUse Management  & Policy Institute (InformationInstitute), will be presenting a paper at the iSchools iConference 2012 to be held February 7-10, 2012in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  Ms. Mandel andMs. Alemanne co-authored the paper with Charles R. McClure, Francis Eppes Professor andDirector of the Information Institute.  Their paper, entitled RuralAnchor Institution Broadband Connectivity: Enablers and Barriers to Adoption, coverstwo projects currently underway at the Information Institute at the College ofCommunication and Information,FloridaState University.

The paper presents findings from broadband needs assessments theInformation Institute is conducting at rural anchor institutions for the NorthFlorida Broadband Authority (NFBA) and Florida Rural Broadband Alliance, LLC (FRBA) service areas, that is, the North Central,Northwest, and South Central Rural Areas of Critical Economic Concern(RACEC) in the state ofFlorida.  It also explains introduces amodel for community-based broadband planning that will be piloted during the FRBA project extension in Spring and Summer2012.  More information on these projects isavailable at the NFBA project website and the FRBAproject website.

A preprint of the paper is available here.