Who is Using Your Computers?
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008This session on Sunday afternoon was a discussion forum sponsored by the RUSA-MARS division of ALA. It’s subtitle was “Best practices for managing and serving public computer users.” The facilitators created a list of questions to promote discussion that fell into 3 broad categories: technology, patron behavior & needs, and policy.
Technology questions focused on whether you offered automatic or manual sign-up, commercial or homegrown solutions, guest logins or not, wireless access, and Microsoft Office or other productivity software. Patron behavior/need questions focused on how patrons login, what they do on the computers, how long they stay, with what do they need the most help, what services do they request that you don’t offer, and are there questions about the priority of one patron’s tasks over another’s. Policy questions focused on levels of access, ability to download files and software, whether or not you filter/block some sites, policies for problems with patron behavior, and policies about priority of patrons’ computer tasks.
We were seated at round tables and discussed the answers to these questions with folks at our table. Near the end of the session, we reported on our table discussions to the larger group. While the discussions were useful in some cases, it was up to each individual to jot down any ideas for use back at his/her home system. From the title of the session, I had thought that I would be given a handout with best practices to take home with me. My library system already has automated sign-up for computers and several policies in place for dealing with many of the issues that came up so perhaps other librarians found this session more helpful.
