People in the Washington area who may be struggling with using computers, phones or other technology now have a place to turn. The Washington Carnegie Public Library is now conducting Tech Tuesday to help people with some of the issues they may have to make the most use of their devices.
"People can always come to the library and get help at any time. What this is for is for dealing with that little question, like how to upload an app to your phone. We try to do this on a designated day because we have people available," said library director Teresa Heidenreich. "If you get a new piece of technology, like an iPad or some other reading device and you need to learn how to best use it, you can come in on tech Tuesday and we can help you."
Heidenreich says the dedicated day for tech assistance grew out of a tech-grant the library received. That grant provided some classes earlier this year that exposed a need for some ongoing instruction.
"When we received a grant to do digital literacy workshops, we did those from January to April, and we noticed, based on the number of people who signed up, that there was a real need for technical education in the community," she said. "What we found was that many people knew a little about tech, but were not knowledgeable about specific programs or apps. There are limitations that people have to specific programs and technology. It is like most of us know enough to start but not enough to do a lot more. We found a need. The grant allowed us to bring in more people to help. We did some Spanish bilingual sessions and that opened up to us that people need help to get beyond basic things."
Heidenreich says that during this soft opening for the project they have found people from all parts of the community need a little push to help them to do what they need and want to accomplish.
"We've been doing this quietly for a few months. We just posted it formally as a service. This has given us some practice and let us shake it out and be certain it will work the way we expect it to work," she said. "We have been seeing a variety of people, anywhere from age 25 and up, all nationalities and ethnicities. We have people looking to pull up job applications and fill them out online and they don't know how to do that, so we can help them."
The library is asking people to call ahead and make appointments, so that people needing help don't have to experience long waits.
"We ask that people call ahead and make an appointment, so that we can have someone available to help and they don't have to wait," said Heidenreich. "We are doing this with our regular staff, but we have scheduled our staff for Tuesday evenings so that we can be more accommodating. We are looking forward to helping our community with any tech hiccups that they have."
People can make appointments by calling 812-254-4586. Most of the tech help is scheduled between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. but appointments can be made on Tuesday at just about any time. Because this is something new Heidenreich says it will be under evaluation and could be expanded in the future.
"If it ends up growing we may bring in a volunteer to help. We might even expand it to additional days. We are always evaluating and making changes and if we think we can do it differently and do it better we will switch it up," she said. "We want to help fill the gap for the average everyday person."
