OSLC: Unique Events, PT Barnum and Muffin Stumps

This was presented by Jim Mann. I have no idea why the “ten things” talk was so popular and this one was so sparsely attended. It was a program on upgrading public PCs to make them live longer. “All you need is a screwdriver and a credit card” the problem is mostly about the philosophy and somewhat about the budget.

Unique events are the ones that shape policy, patrons wanting to do a specific thing. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad. They spur people to action more than tech planning. Keep an eye out for them, they will cause change to happen, quickly.

The Digital Divide is really between the board, staff and public.

– Actual images of hardware installation, put in USB drives, DVD burners and XP upgrades (and of course memory)
– Lock the machine down (old PAC securityo tool, DeepFreeze, Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit)
– Deploy it using Ghost or Altiris

BUT there may be other ways to buy computers that are as functional and as cheap “how much money do you want to put into that Gates Computer?” According to users, what makes a computer up to date? They’re black, flat panel monitor, “XP feel”

In the Ohio library system, “entertainment” is in their mission statement which means they have to have computers to support that (for videos, for music, games, social networking). Why upgrade? Well if you can’t get parts for it anywhere but EBay. When you’re deciding who gets the best computers: reference, circ, public, OPAC in that order. “Use throwaway computers for your OPACs”

We looked at the Tiger Direct site just to see that computers really were as cheap as he was saying they were.