So They Won't Hate the Wait: Time Control for Workstations
By Karen G. Schneider
American Libraries Columnist
Director of the Garfield Library in Brunswick, New York, and author of A Practical Guide to Internet Filters (Neal-Schuman, 1997)
kgs@bluehighways.com
Column for December 1998
With the Internet doubling in growth every year, the question is not whether libraries have time limits on computers—most do, typically ranging from 30 minutes to an hour—but how those limits are enforced. It would be nice to think library patrons are "self-regulating," as one administrator wrote me. (In that case, why have circulation periods for books?) More often, the reality is that when he spies an Internet computer, Dr. Jekyll, the patron who will willingly wait a year on the reserve list for the Eleventh Commandment, grows fangs and knuckle hair and becomes Mr. Hyde, who wants his Internet now and doesn't want to leave once he sits down!
On the dotted line
Sign-up sheets are the least-technical, most-obvious solution for controlling access; over 30 librarians wrote to tell me that they use them. Sign-up procedures are particularly useful if your library takes reservations ahead of time. The question of "who's next" is easily answered by glancing at the sheet, and disputes about time can be resolved by looking at when people checked in.
However, there are at least two significant potential problems with sign-up sheets. First, they require staff monitoring and control—signing people in, ensuring the right people get to their stations, resolving disputes about who is next, etc. This may range from a fairly trivial investment of staff time in quieter libraries to a significant added-labor component in busier ones. While use of library resources always requires staff involvement to some degree, sign-up sheets require librarians to be the primary enforcement mechanism. This also places staff in the center of disputes about use of computer resources.
I spy for the FBI
Another problem with sign-up sheets has to do with their visibility and permanence. Patron confidentiality extends to the digital environment. If you wouldn't answer the question "Did so-and-so check out books today?" you might consider whether your sign-in system provides patrons a little too much information about what their neighbors are doing. There are ways to track whether stations are booked without treading on patron privacy. Michelle McLean of Casey-Cardinia Library Corporation in Melbourne, Australia, told me that "at our largest branch, we have a whiteboard with all the machines and times, and use red markers to indicate what times and machines are booked at any given time."
Even if, as one library director told me, "patrons don't have privacy in my state," we as a profession have embraced patron privacy as an organizational value. How do you discard your sign-up sheets? Most online catalogs don't retain histories of patron use because once upon a time (about 10 years ago) the FBI was leaning hard on libraries to release that information to them as part of its "Library Awareness Program" (AL, Apr. 1988, p. 244). (To paraphrase James Thurber, it's not paranoia if it really happened to you.) That's why so many states have patron confidentiality laws. One rule of thumb is if it can be subpoenaed, it needs to be destroyed. You wouldn't want the press retrieving patron sign-up sheets from your library dumpster the next time a Monica Lewinsky turns out to be famous.
One of the most basic conflicts is between the person who wants to settle down for a long winter's search and the patron who "just wants to look something up." If you have the money and the space for an additional workstation, an express workstation—I'm thinking of the one at Canton (Mich.) Public Library—is a great way to direct traffic.
Software controls
Then there are software approaches to time management. Some are locally produced, such as the one described by Susan McGowan of the Morton Grove (Ill.) Public Library. Their systems person wrote a "nifty program that lets us split time slots between two patrons, cancel reservations, and automatically checks to make sure patrons haven't reserved more than their allotted two hours."
Another creative approach is to catalog computers like books and allow patrons to charge out their Internet sessions. Michelle McLean told me, "Patrons must book in at the desk with their library card, and we issue the barcoded machines against their card for that hour." (I can't wait to see the bib record for a Pentium!) One librarian advised me anonymously that her library system used the reserve module to "charge" people a dollar a minute for overdue time sessions, but in practice patrons always yielded the stations and they have never actually had to charge anyone.
Several software programs, including WinU, WinSelect, and Cybrarian, offer time-management features. A common function is the ability to time-out sessions. That feature alone, librarians comment, isn't good enough for a public-service environment—do you really want Dr. Jekyll's session to blink out after 30 minutes? So these software programs are gradually including other features. All three can present a customized warning message a few minutes prior to the end of a session and can time-out to your main screen. Cybrarian allows log-ins by users, reading from a spreadsheet file of first and last names and barcode numbers (it can speak directly to Innopac's circulation system). Cybrarian also has a nice time-override feature—so if Dr. Jekyll isn't quite finished, the librarian can press a key, type in a password, and give him a few more minutes. At least Mr. Hyde can blame the computer, not the librarian!
Next month: Fortres, Cybrarian, and several other "lock-down" tools for protecting your systems.
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