- So far we have held 217 courses with a total of 1,924 participants – and the number is increasing every day. The interest in attending the "IT for Everyone" courses is immense throughout the county, reports Anni Guldberg Madsen, project manager, the Library of Brønderslev.
The public libraries of North Denmark were really determined to go for it when the starting signal sounded for the first round of calls for project proposals from the Digital North Denmark. Hardly had the Lighthouse Center accepted the "IT for Everyone – Introductions to the Internet for At Least 10,000 North Denmark Citizens" project before they were up and going. March 2 2001 was the premiere of the first introductory course at the Library of Frederikshavn.
- Since then we have had 100 library assistants trained and qualified as teachers of IT, and now all public libraries except three are arranging courses. The remaining thre municipalities will be starting up over this coming spring, explains Anni Guldberg Madsen:
- Via the library system we have all the potential to reach everybody in the region. All the municipalities of North Denmark have a public library, and there are local branches and mobile libraries. We are already including IT as part of our offers to the users – and we are here for the benefit of all!

Free Courses
The steering group behind "IT for Everyone" headed by Kirsten Boelt, City Librarian has had the Danish Bibliographic Centre to produce course material for a three hour introductory course. he Dansk Biblioteks Center til at udarbejde kursusmateriale til et tre timers introduktionsforløb. Here participants will be introduced to the Internet and its uses, and they get the opportunity to access the web during hands on sessions. They learn how to search – and surf. And they are introduced to e-mail. The course is without any charges to the participants who "pay" by completing a small evaluation form. This way the steering group gets useful and essential information on the effects of the course to the participants. So far more than 90 percent answered that they benefit "a lot" or "to some exten" from the course.

Parents and Kids Courses
- We do have a common course material prepared, however, the planning of the course is up to the individual instructor. On some locations special courses have been created – for example in Aalborg they run parents and kids courses. And we have held a couple of follow-up courses here in Brønderslev, tells Anni Guldberg Madsen.
The number of PCs available to each library varies a lot. However, the library has access to borrowing five laptop PCs placed at disposal by the project, and a projector is available, too. Everyone should benefit from the course, so the maximum number of participants is two per PC unit – and with two librarians present to teach and support.

Senior Citizens Well RepresentedThe impression of the Internet as no suitable playground for the senior citizens of the county gets its deathblow by the figures presented by Anni Guldberg Madsens. So far she has received and processed about 1,600 evaluation forms, and of these 836 were o.a.p's or on an early retirement. Females were represented by 30 percent more than males. And the average age has been no less than 57 years.
- A lot of people have a computer with Internet access in their homes – only they just don't know what to do with it. Så these courses come in handy to demonstrate that this is not as difficult as imagined– the participants taste blood and want to try out more when they get home, declares Anni Guldberg Madsen.

Wants to Reach More
While the "IT for Everyone" courses are selling well to the senior citizens, the age bracket of 30- 45 years are hard to reach with this free offer from the libraries. Anni Guldberg Madsen is convinced that this more due to the lack of time in families with young children, not that the need does not exist. This is why the spring of 2002 is scheduled to offer special courses addressing the busy parents.
- Basically we will begin to offer more specialized courses and target them to special groups – for example refugees and immigrants. So far we have only had 45 participants that were not born in Denmark. We wll also set out to arrange courses for private enterprises – but that will not be a free offer.