Netscape Timeout

[Sue Boggs]

At 07:32 AM 12/4/96 -0800, Marjorie wrote:
>Has anyone successfully found a feature which will time out a Netscape
>search left on the screen by a patron back to the homepage of the library?

Several people have answered this specific query but I have a variation on
it.  We would like  to have the workstation exit Netscape altogether if the
patron leaves the station.  Does anyone have an idea how we can do this?
Any solution will have to be weighed against the various scenarios giving
rise to inactivity (ie student is chatting with a friend, reading a long
document, fiddling with a paper jam in the printer...) and will this cause
more grief in those situations compared to the legitimate times of
inactivity because the patron has left the station.  Preferably there would
be some kind of warning and a chance to "hit any key" to prevent exiting.

The reason behind this move is we have noticed an increase in non-campus
traffic in our library this fall.  We are a private institution and as such
are not supported by tax dollars.  Some of the services one can access
through our  "reference workstation" homepage, such as First Search, are
charged on a per search or monthly fee basis so we are trying to restrict
access to our primary clientele.  We have passworded all the machines with
PassKeys and the students have to show their ID cards to get the password
but if they don't quit Netscape when they are finished with a search, the
potential is there for anyone walking by to use these databases or get
anywhere on the Internet.  Besides the cost factor we have already had an
instance of a legitimate student using the Netscape email to send harassing
messages, we don't need to add the possibility of non-students.  We can't
turn the mail off because we encourage the students to mail documents to
themselves rather than print them.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Sue

Sue Boggs
Systems Librarian
University of Puget Sound
boggs at ups.edu