[WEB4LIB] Children's cdrom workstation

[Joy Butler]

Lin,

We have not used cd changers for several years now.  It is definitely worth 
it to set your station up with a large hard drive and an imaging program.  
We use CD-Quickshare from Media Path to do our machines. (I've got about 30 
stations set up on this scheme).  CD-Quickshare and it's new upgrade, MA32 
have been pretty easy to use.  I use WinBatch to switch out CDs for 
CD-Quickshare, however, MA32 really does work like a virtual jukebox.  You 
can load 8 titles at a time - any more than that would need to be switched 
out... but it isn't hard to do in the background - behind the shell.

We use WinU for our Public Access Shell and WinSelect for security.  This 
keeps kids from saving to the hard drive, messing with system settings and 
such.  The machines are locked down pretty tight.  I've had 12 machines out 
at branches for over a year and have had very few problems with software.  
We load 10-15 titles on each machine.

We use 2 Koss Headphones per machine with a Y-Adapter and cable traps for 
the audio.  This enables two to sit at each station (parent and child) and 
the headphones are pretty secure.  I really researched headphones and found 
that Koss had the most sturdy headphones and they had a great return policy. 
  We set up a plan where each branch/department has 2 sets of headphones and 
a spare.  When a set breaks (this was usually the volume control wheels on 
the earpiece), the branch would send that set back to us and install the 
spare.  We would collect 6 or so and box them up and send them back to Media 
Management and Magnetics (they handled the lifetime warranties).  They would 
send us new sets which we would then distribute back out.  We are in the 
process of getting the supply room to handle this job.

It's taken a lot of working and reworking to get this setup perfected - and 
I'm sure there's a lot more work to do.  One thing I found recently is that 
a lot of the newer titles work very well from the hard drive without an 
imaging program.  We purchased 10G drives (plenty of room for 15 titles) and 
I partition it into C: about 2Gigs and D: for the rest.  I copy all the 
titles over to D: in separate folders using the same name as the CD (for 
example, when you load up Arthur's Teacher Trouble in the CD drive, it might 
read "ArthurTT".  This is the name you would give the folder on drive D:.  I 
copy all the data into that folder and pull the CD out of the drive.  I then 
run setup (usually using Cleansweep to log the install - and clean the 
program off if there's any trouble with it) and check out the title.

If you would like to know any more about this setup, please call or email 
and I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Joy

Joy Butler - PC Applications Specialist, Information Systems
Email: jbutler at plch.lib.oh.us
Phone: 513-369-3182
Fax: 513-369-4565
The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County
800 Vine Street, Cincinnati OH 45202-2071




>From: Lin Light <holight at lakeland.lib.mi.us>
>Reply-To: holight at lakeland.lib.mi.us
>To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
>Subject: [WEB4LIB] Children's cdrom workstation
>Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 11:53:22 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Looking for a good setup for use in the children's area of a public
>library, that has a multi-cdrom changer (external or internal) that is
>geared for primarily interactive programs.
>Any input would be appreciated.
>
>
>--
>Lin Light
>Head of
>Technical Services/Automation
>Herrick District Library
>300 S. River Ave.
>Holland, MI 49423
>llight at lakeland.lib.mi.us
>Voice-616.355.3727
>Fax-616.355.1426
>
>

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