Celia’s Fifth Blog for LIBRARY SYSTEMS CLASS-“New-to-us" computers

This past week, The Roanoke Public Library had our computer tech come on Tuesday. Our computer tech is from South Bend so having him actually come to the library is a major deal. He came because the Roanoke Town Court got new computers and donated their old ones to the library. We were very grateful to get them as one of our patron computers had such a small hard drive that just putting the XP operating system and Microsoft Office on it filled it so that only 14% was left. I went to defrag it and couldn't since to do a defrag you need 15% free hard drive space. On another computer, the desktop kept showing an error message. We had to keep telling the patrons to go ahead and click on the "big e" and they would get to the Internet and not try to fix the error as it just wasn't going to fix. Getting rid of those two computers is such a relief that I can't tell you.

When the Town Court told me that they were going to donate the computers I was so excited that I forgot to ask details. At one point in between them telling of the donation which was before Christmas and receiving the computers 2 weeks ago, there was talk that we may only get one computer. I figured that one was better than none so I was still grateful. But when the Judge delivered them, he brought not only the two computers, but the computer that they used as a server, two flat 19" flat screen monitors, 2 mice and 2 split keyboards.

Back last fall, the library's circulation computer hard drive went out. It was a disaster. I was running circulation in safe mode for a time and for a couple months we were giving patrons post-it-notes for their due dates since the register printer is very hard to set up. The board worked fairly fast and bought 2 new computers-one to replace a very, very old patron computer and our circulation one. The President of our Friend of the Roanoke Public Library refurbished that old circulation computer by replacing the hard drive and adding memory.

The conclusion of this is that we have 6 patron computers, one bought new last fall, one is the refurbished circulation computer, two are the donated ones from the court, and one is a special computer got through a Grant from the Gates Foundation that was made especially for libraries. As I am writing this the sixth one is one of the challenges that I knew was coming. The computer tech said that the best possible computer for us would be turning the court's server back into a regular computer. The problem with that is that it had no operating system. The library has special purchased licenses for 2 XPs but we have no start-up disks. I tried downloading them from the Microsoft website since we are allowed because of the license purchase but they were not bootable disks. We finally got one on our third try but this was a long process. The computer tech ended up taking the court's server computer and the bootable disk with him to try to build the computer so that he can just attach it when he returns. Conclusion-the patron should end up with 6 relatively good and fast computers when we are done.

We also have an OPAC computer at the back of the room that we have now attached the scanner to so that we don't have to disturb any patrons in order to scan. Evidently a scanner cannot be put on a network and must be attached to just one computer so this is the least disruptive one. The only problem with this is that the computer is wirelessly connected so the computer tech will have to wirelessly connect it to a printer in order for us to print the scanned items but at least it does not require asking patrons on the scanner's computer to leave it for a while so we can scan something for another patron.

So all sounds well, don't it? But there is a problem- Sound. We discovered the computers donated by the court don't have sound cards. One of the Board Trustees is going to take sound cards out of the old computers that we are getting rid of to put in them but the patrons aren't happy in the mean time but at least that is fairly fixable. We think that the fan may be going out in one of them too so we may be taking a fan out of one of the computers also.

We are planning on keeping one of the better computers as a backup so that should anything happen to one of the computers we have an easy replacement. We are planning on putting the circulation software on that backup computer so should something happen to the circulation computer again we won't be as disabled as we were last fall. I am taking one of the LCD monitors for my office computer and the other will be used by my assistance at her area so the patrons will not have them to fight over. Right now I don't think that we will be using the split keyboard as I have been told that they require a lot of time to get used to.

The computer tech is returning next week to finish off some things he was unable to get to like changing our passwords for more protection, setting up that last computer, and networking my office computer in so that it can share files with the circulation computer and wirelessly connecting a printer to the OPAC. I can't wait till it is all done and the bugs are worked out! I think it is going to be so great to be fully functioning and not have computers that patrons get because they arrived at the library later than others that don't work as well or as fast as they would desire.