Comments on: On Donated Technology

By: Meg

Meg — Tue, 08 May 2007 13:37:35 +0000

A hosted solution isn’t necessarily the big problem, but finding someone to enter all the contents of the library. Even a small library contains a lot of information… The two-county system I used to work for is slowly getting automated, and that’s what is taking the libraries so long. The tech setup is there. The people with the time (and attention) to enter the data in any sort of speedy manner are not.

By: Robbi

Robbi — Fri, 04 May 2007 14:18:54 +0000

Hi! Somewhat off topic, but could you please give specifics about how/what/why you are upgrading and tweaking your personal X31? Funnily enough (and sad too) that is the laptop that I use everyday. I plan on upgrading to a newer laptop in August before the next semester starts, but I’d love to take the time over the summer to play around with the Thinkpad. Can you give any suggestions?

Open source software is such a hot topic in academia and I’d love to have some practical experience in doing something technical like this before I graduate (UT-K, May 2008 hopefully.)
Thanks!

By: Heavy Metal Librarian » Blog Archive » Computers Make Our Lives Easier

Heavy Metal Librarian » Blog Archive » Computers Make Our Lives Easier — Thu, 03 May 2007 16:32:32 +0000

[...] Last night, I happened to stumble across a post on librarian.net that touched upon a lot of the issues I’ve been wrestling with recently. Jessamyn details the many ordeals associated with donated computer equipment in libraries: I ran down the options with the librarian. 1) Buy an XP license or three from Tech Soup. 2) Hassle her friend to figure out wtf is up with the software on these computers. 3) Wipe the drives and install Ubuntu. [...]

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 02 May 2007 15:41:21 +0000

If there are lots of other tiny libraries in that situation with automation, it strikes me that there’s a business opportunity here. For someone to start up a fully hosted solution running Koha or Evergreen (open source ILS), if it can be done at a tiny affordable price. There would have to be realistic expectations as to support provided for price paid. Seems like an interesting idea to me.

[PS: Your comment system---if you forget to type in the magic word, or if it decides you are spam for some other reason, you have to press the back button, and in Firefox my comment is gone, it's lost, I need to type it in again. This has happened twice now! Got to remember to copy the text to clipboard before I hit submit. ]

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Wed, 02 May 2007 04:10:11 +0000

Out of the four libraries I work with most often, only one is automated and they have a classic OPAC via Follett that works in the library but is not online. We are getting it online this week sometime. The rest type cards, or get them from the people they buy the books from.

It’s not so much that they can’t afford to automate, but that they don’t have the time+money combination. Any sort of automation requires intensive person-hours of work and there’s very little incentive to do it. There is a statewide ILL system that works for ILL stuff and other than that… hard to say. I’m trying to encourage them to think about Library Thing, but most of these libraries really need a supported solution — none of the lirbarians are tech savvy enough to really run an OPAC with all the other things they have to do in their 16 hour weeks — which isn’t going to happen with an open source option that is within their budget. So, we wait…

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 02 May 2007 02:22:26 +0000

I don’t see it as a comment, but I’d vote for doing an Edubuntu install (http://www.edubuntu.org/) as either a standalone or as a diskless lab booting off a server. Easy install, well documented, very robust with Firefox, Open Office and some 20 packages for kids and teens.
I’ve modeled this with an old Gates computer with two NICs as the server and old Dell Celeron 550 (OPACS) as the clients.
IMHO

Jim
GCPL
Xenia Ohio

By: khalas

khalas — Tue, 01 May 2007 21:17:05 +0000

This is off the topic, but I’m curious how the teeny libraries you know of have decided to catalog its collection, if at all. With the cheap and free options for ILSs expanding, and then options like LibraryThing or Delicious Library out there, are there still situations where a library can’t afford to automate? I guess if they can’t get a single reliable computer…That’s a good point about the time it takes to solicit the free stuff out there (or write a grant, etc.). What do they do instead? Tell me no one has to type cards…

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 01 May 2007 21:11:33 +0000

A friend at a smaller (not tiny) public library was telling me the other day that they are seriously considering not accepting book donations other than for their yearly book sale.

They found that “free” was costing a lot in staff time. Someone had to do a quick visual check of the material (moldy crap/smells like ashtray vs acceptable). They then would take the acceptable material and check to see if it was in the catalogue, etc. If it was in the catalogue then it was just an added item (still requires processing etc), but if it wasn’t in the catalogue someone then has to decide if it is needed. My friend spent an entire Saturday going through about 300 computer books deciding what to keep or not.

By: Carol

Carol — Tue, 01 May 2007 18:52:14 +0000

Oh, this brings back memories. I started working in IT in 1995, and my first project was to convert 50 Windows 3.1 PCs to Windows 95. Of course, back then you could use the same product code over and over again. I also had to figure out how to squeeze every last bit out of the hard drives, by constantly removing temp files.

Anyway, it IS a pain to have old equipment. I was freelancing as a computer tech, and this old lady had some piece of **** that wasn’t worth keeping, but she insisted, so I ended up having her buy all sorts of hardware to upgrade the PC, and in the end she finally bought a new one. I hated charging her, which is one of the reasons I got out of being a freelancer.

You are a saint for doing this! I look forward to this when I become a librarian (SJSU class of ’08, hopefully).

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 01 May 2007 14:30:30 +0000

Great post. I’m interested in tiny libraries. I don’t know what I’m talking about here, but I’m not going to let that stop me…

I wonder if there is a way to install Ubuntu from a keychain drive, if so you could pack one with your stuff when help do this kind of stuff. Also I read that some libraries have opensource software installers on CD that can be borrowed format he library – if would be cool to make Ubuntu availalbe now that you have it downloaded.