Helping public library patrons with telnet

[Library Internet Resources Co-ordinator]

At 12:17 PM -0800 2/4/98, Sherie Brown wrote:

>Our online catalog just became accessible through our website, and patrons
>are calling for help because they don't have telnet on their home PC, or
>have managed to download telnet but haven't configured their browser to
>find it, or are using AOL and can't find telnet, etc etc.

Given that your patrons will be running various versions of software on
various hardware and software platforms do you really want to get into
helping them install and configure software?

Telnet is part of basic Internet access and their ISP should be responsible
for helping them with this.

Some of our patrons have said that some of the AOL tech folks don't know
what telnet is but we called AOL and verified that it is possible to use
telnet software with AOL accounts. Several patrons have told me that AOL
has helped them obtain and configure telnet software.



Library Internet Resources Co-ordinator webguru at gtu.edu
(currently Gilles Poitras gpoitras at gtu.edu)
Graduate Theological Union Library
2400 Ridge Road         Berkeley, California, USA
http://www.gtu.edu/library/