library technology choices (was Logging Chat Sessions)

[laura hudson]

At 07:13 PM 10/9/97 -0700, you wrote:
>After muttering that I had never seen a scholarly use of chat and 
>deleting the chat clients from the public area computers, one of the 
>instructors here has given his classes an assignment to interview 
>someone using Internet chat.

This brings to bear the question of to what extent libraries want to/can
support classroom uses of technology.  We have about 15 terminals in our
reference room which are wired for Netscape, which students use for
classroom and non-classroom work, but they don't have, for instance, word
processing programs or other software that they might need for assignments.
Nor do we allow e-mail or chat, whether school related or not.  We just
don't have enough computers and have decided to draw the line at these
applications, artificial as it is.  Sometimes it seems a silly line to draw,
and we are willing to make exceptions or changes in the policy as needed.  

One difficult situation occurred where a teacher was assigning students to
use a Web forms interface to turn in assignments.  Unfortunately, the server
which they were posting to frequently froze and students were left with an
assignment typed on the screen which they could not submit.  At this point,
I would tell them that what they should do in the future is to type their
answers to a word processing program and then cut and paste to Netscape, but
that they had to go do it in a computer lab.  Students were, obviously and
rightly, frustrated.  

Which, of course, brings up the difficult question of how to increase
contact with the faculty who are giving these assignments without making
sure that the technology is available to support them.  Which is not a new
question, is it?  We have faculty giving out library assignments without
thinking about the fact that 200 students using the same book at once will
mean frustration when the book is not on the shelf.  Last year a teacher
gave out an assignment for students to review a CD-ROM product without
checking to see if there was anywhere on campus that students would be
allowed to load CD-ROM software.  And so forth.  All they had to do was call
us and we would have bent over backwards to find out for them.  Frustrating,
this PR problem, because (I think) we try so hard to make and  maintain contact.

Ideas?  Discussion?

Laura Hudson
Alden Library Reference Department
Ohio University Libraries