Headphones -- revisited

[Phalbe Henriksen]

Folks,

I've just subscribed and looked at the archives ~

On Jan. 3 & 11 of this year, there was a discussion about cleanliness of 
headphones on the Gates computers. As a former audiovisual librarian and 
now manager of four Gates Foundation computers, I'd like to throw in my 
take on this problem.

Audiovisual departments that have had listening stations have worked on 
this problem for years. Libraries with *money* (from my lowly perspective) 
tend to go for the little sealed alcohol wipes. Cleaning the headphones 
between each use can get quite expensive, not to mention time consuming. 
The ultimate in cleanliness, though. I know of one library where they give 
the alcohol wipe to the patron and it's up to 'im/'er to clean the 
headphones. IIRC, this saves on the cost of the wipes, as people who don't 
use them leave them on the table.

What we do is a compromise. We keep the headphones on the computer tables, 
sort of pushed to the back. Therefore, whatever we do, we start out with in 
the morning. And that is to wrap each earpiece in the cheapest sandwich bag 
we can buy. ('m not sure I can describe how we do this so securely that 
little children can't pull them off, but if anyone's interested, I'll try 
to write it up.)

If a patron asks, we change the sandwich bag, so they get a clean one. Very 
few people ask.

We also wipe the earpieces with rubbing alcohol occasionally. One of our 
circ clerks is a cleanliness freak and this is just fodder for her 
obsession. Works for us.

As for the headphones themselves, of the eight we received, seven have been 
broken. They're nice headphones. Too nice. We buy the ones in the library 
catalogs made for rough school use to replace these nice ones.

Phalbe Henriksen
Director
Bradford County Public Library
Starke, FL

"Perhaps the two most valuable and satisfactory products of American
civilization are the librarian on the one hand and the cocktail in the
other." -- Louis Stanley Jast