[WEB4LIB] RE: Technology Knowledge (Or Not)

[george at library.caltech.edu]

Jule Hartman contributed:

1. Can I hook up my thumb drive, and where ?

The same applies to headphones and any of the wide variety of removable
media from digital cameras.  For the longest time, if an appropriate port
was available on a WinTel box, it was conveniently located on the back of
the box, behind the monitor, up against a wall or the back or the table.
Or, perhaps even more fun, a minitower might be on the floor, underneath a
table.

The first major industrial design advance on the WinTel side that I
encountered was the addition of USB and FireWire ports on the front of a
Dell, although they were cleverly hidden behind an unlabelled, opaque
plastic flap.  Not at all convenient for public access workstations.

A couple of months ago, the Caltech Library System started installing media
dashboards <http://library.caltech.edu/about/mediadash.htm> on library
workstations.  Dumbness factor dropped like a rock!

George S. Porter
Sherman Fairchild Library of Engineering & Applied Science
California Institute of Technology
Mail Code 1-43, Pasadena, CA 91125
Telephone (626) 395-3409 Fax (626) 431-2681
http://library.caltech.edu
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