Improving our public computers
February 28, 2006
Are you starting a project to overhaul your public access computers, perhaps in connection with this new Gates grant? Are you wanting to offer your public more from your public computers? Check out Lori Bowen Ayre’s post on her blog Mentat: The Ideal Public Access Computer. There are several things I would add to Ayre’s list for an ideal computer–let’s dream big–such as IM being allowed, CD-burning abilities, digital image viewing software, etc., but her list is a good place to start. She even provides a printable version of the post with software and hardware recommendations.
March 1st, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Saw a company at ALA called Userful http://userful.com/ that looked like an interesting solution for public computers. It’s based on Linux and includes the functionality that is mentioned in the article.
March 2nd, 2006 at 8:17 am
Yes, I have seen them at conferences and read a bit about them as well. I’ve never heard directly from a library that is using Userful though. Any Userful users out there wish to comment?
March 2nd, 2006 at 3:53 pm
For an ideal public computer, I would deal with the problem of mailto links on web pages, which try to bring up the default e-mail client and fail with a not-useful system message. I haven’t done this yet where I work, but I imagine adding as the default e-mail client a script that displays a message (perhaps a web page) explaining how to deal with mailto links.
March 2nd, 2006 at 4:38 pm
That’s a great idea! Now, how to do it….
August 17th, 2006 at 8:21 am
Hi Sarah,
Thanks for the link. I guess I should have called it the Minimum Requirements for a Public Access Computer which is really more what I mean.
I’m going to look into that Mailto: issue and see if I can find a solution. I’ll post it here if I do.
Also, about Userful…I’m a big fan. They have a nice product. I thought I had blogged about it but I see that I haven’t. Will have to remedy that!
Lori