Here’s a Miami Herald story, all too familiar to most public library workers, from Broward County (FL), about the frustrations of offering Internet access to the public. While many stories focus on CIPA, this one deals with the everyday headaches of access–professionals who end up playing computer cop in an effort to ensure equitable access.
Nevin Gussack, a librarian at Northwest Regional probably speaks for a lot of librarians: `Signing people up and making up numbers [to log on], as a professional, is kind of demeaning. I don’t like being a disciplinarian. I like being the purveyor of information. I would rather teach than be a policeman.’
It’s an issue shoe has been addressing in her journal lately.
Getting freaky
I long for the day when we get and implement monitoring software. This past week has been especially bad. I can’t understand why people get so freaked out over the Internet. We had one patron who was extremely snippy to the person ahead of him on our 15-minute station about taking too long. When the person behind him, an extreme problem patron in regards to computers which is a whole other story, got a bit snippy with him, he darn near freaked out. I wish I had gone up to him, told him to chill, especially since he treated the person before him in the exact same manner and he therefore had absolutely no room for complaint in my eyes.
public access terminals
I’ll go through this on another tangent. I have several climbing buddies that take extended (several months at a time) road trips. They use normally use public libraries public terminals to check their email while they are on the road. If it wasn’t for them they wouldn’t be able to keep in touch with us and potential partners they are meeting up with.
I still wonder with the CIPA and other laws have to say about a public library that installs an open wireless access point.
Re:Getting freaky
It’s amazing how seriously people will fight over this sort of thing. What is it about web mail that gets the public so revved up? I’ve said before, it’s just a phone line and Internet Explorer, for god’s sake. I’d say six of ten people at our library public access terminals have access at home, or work.
The day a copy of Beowulf comes in and people are getting into fistfights to check it out will be a red letter day in my book.
As you may know, I could so relate to Broward County’s plight. I actually have a demo version of the software they’re implementing on my desktop at work to play with. This is a bigger issue than filtering, methinks, because filtering seems to come up on exceptions, whereas this is a day in day out sort of thing for most libraries.
Public Access in Malls (for a fee, of course)
I recall reading not long ago about someone wanting to put tamperproof(?) kiosks in malls for people to check email and maybe do a few other things. I hope my mind isn’t playing tricks on me. I’ve never seen this done, but I don’t live in too big of a city either.
Ahh yes, a Google search for – mall internet kiosk – brings up some great hits AND rants. Shoe, this one’s for you: http://www.rotteneggs.com/se/2684459.html
This thread at kiosks.org discusses setting one up and having a dollar bill acceptor and all that. Here’s a picture of one type of kiosk that’s already commercially for sale (hold your mouse over the picture to watch it rotate). There’s a mention of these kiosks being put in hotels and airports too. I bet they’d sell them to any library willing to pay 😉