Self-regulated Internet use

[Ann Owens]

Sacramento Public's Central Library did this for several months, and it was a disaster. The 17 Internet terminals on two floors were a continual battleground.
 
First, the wait could not be predicted, and often was several hours. Since we are downtown, many folks are on their lunch hours, and want to know whether they would even be close to getting a terminal within the hour. Those with small children who only wanted to check e-mail were also seriously inconvenienced.

Second, since we have public Internet computers on two floors, people would abuse the system on both floors - because we were not monitoring, there was no way for us to catch those who took more than their one allowed turn per day, nor for anyone to know when their hour was up.

Third, people would "camp out" at the terminal they wanted, thus preventing the current user from maintaining even a modicum of privacy, and requiring a librarian or security guard to remove them to a respectable distance.  Several times, there were heated arguments, which necessitated calling security or mediation by the librarians, because "so-and-so has been on this machine for x hours - I've been watching ..."

We ultimately went to a reservation system:  Folks sign up at the Reference desk, in person only, for any one hour during the current day, and come back when it's their turn.  We now start turns at the top of each hour, instead of whenever the terminal is vacated.  We also implemented two 15-minute express terminals, one on each floor, for which we do not take reservations.  There is frequently a line for those, but it moves quickly and relatively without incident.  If a reserved terminal becomes available before the next reservation, it becomes an "express" terminal, and can be used by anyone for the balance of the hour only.  These rules seem to work ok, but require some user-training to explain the details.  The librarians' involvement is minimal, and usually limited to explaining the rules.  Our public likes the express terminals, which take a lot of the load off the reserved terminals.


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Ann S. Owens 
Electronic Resources Librarian
Sacramento Public Library
828 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814
ph: 916-264-2940, fax: 916-264-2950
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