[WEB4LIB] PDF tax-forms: links or download locally and link

[Andrew Mutch]

Jerry,

At my old job when we were trying to push Internet, catalog and circulation
through a 56K pipe, tax forms wreaked havoc on the response time.  I downloaded
all of our state tax forms and shared them off our network server.  I was
fortunate enough to get the Federal forms on CD and also shared that on the
network.  These measures really made an appreciable difference not only on our
bandwidth demands but also on staff and customer satisfaction.  I remember the
poor response times we would get from the IRS web site and the slowest times
always seemed to coincide with the heaviest patron demand.  Of course, you had
to keep up with the tax forms as I found that forms would be added or updated as
the tax season progressed.  After we migrated to a T-1 connection, we had less
difficulty with state tax forms but there were still times that having them
locally was a real bonus.

If you have the time and the ability to keep up with them, I would definitely
look at downloading the state forms and getting the Federal forms on CD-ROM,
especially for libraries with low-bandwidth connection.

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Technician
Waterford Township Public Library
Waterford, MI



Jerry Kuntz wrote:

> This question is primarily a concern at public libraries, but I'd also like
> to hear if any Web4lib subscribers have views.
> PDF tax form files can be real bandwidth hogs to download, yet are in such
> heavy demand that we have created prominent links to the federal and state
> form sites on our member library web pages. Have any libraries opted to
> alleviate the bandwidth demands by pre-loading  PDF tax  forms on their LAN
> or individual pcs, and creating links to them?
>
> BTW, in many various discussion group threads on viewers, plug-ins, etc.,
> I've haven't heard anyone suggest that conscious non-support of viewers or
> plug-ins for various file formats is a type of censorship; whereas that
> accusation has been made against libraries that attempt to block web email
> or web-chat sites in the name of resource management. What's with that? Is
> there something more sacrosanct about file formats that the big-market-share
> browsers support?
>
> Jerry Kuntz
> Ramapo Catskill Library System
> jkuntz at rcls.org