[WEB4LIB] Re: Personalized Library Pages

[Thomas Dowling]

----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Ream <dream at saturn.vcu.edu>
To: Thomas Dowling <tdowling at ohiolink.ohiolink.edu>
Cc: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>; Jimmy
Ghaphery <jghapher at saturn.vcu.edu>
Sent: Friday, May 28, 1999 10:19 AM
Subject: Re: [WEB4LIB] Re: Personalized Library Pages


>
> Hi Thomas  (and others)--
>
> We have thought a lot about the use of cookies with VCU's "My Library"
> project and have, for now at least, rejected the idea, because most of
our
> students/users access our pages at public, shared terminals and wouldn't
> want to be "cookied" (is that a word? ;-)) into someone else's
> customized page. Neither would I want someone else "cookied" into mine.
>

Thanks for the response: that was the one reason I could think of.  Our
prototype has an option to prevent making any customizations and I'm
hoping that will be an acceptable solution for public workstations.
Overriding that setting essentially requires write-access to the cookies.

>
> I believe that some commercial sites, such as Yahoo, are using optional
> cookies, but I have no off-the-cuff examples to cite.
>

Having accidentally wiped out my Excite customizations more than once, I
know that this is the common approach for commercial sites.

Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu