[Web4lib] Outside disk usage

[Louise Alcorn]

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Louise E. Alcorn     --    Reference Technology Librarian
West Des Moines Public Library
4000 Mills Civic Pkwy
West Des Moines IA 50265
(515) 222-3573      louise.alcorn at wdm-ia.com
http://www.wdm.lib.ia.us

>>> Richard Wiggins <richard.wiggins at gmail.com> 08/16/05 06:03AM >>>
>Somewhat related question: how often do people show up with pocket USB flash 
>drives and expect to plug them in?

We have at least 1-2 per day come in with USB drives of some sort (flash, thumb).  Our problem is that our somewhat older towers have their USB ports in the *back*, as you mentioned.  We've bought some extenders to bring them over the top of the tower, so the patrons don't have to turn the tower around to plug in--which all too often disconnects some cable or another.  We're trying them out--they're a bit flimsy, and could easily be stolen--I'm taping the heck out of them to attach them to the top of the tower, with a little 'give' at each end for useability.  I'm hoping this will be a deterrent.  We'll see.

We also have 3-4 machines that are using both of the USB ports for peripherals--keyboard and mouse.  I've tried to mark these so patrons don't try to use them for their flash drives.

Frankly, I'd prefer they use a USB drive than a floppy, since we've had increasing problems with disks going 'floopy' as I term it--our drives seem to have problems (we've just replaced them all, so I'm hoping this deals with some of it) and won't read a diskette properly, or will claim it needs formatting.  A lot of patrons have either lost or simply been unable to access data as a result.  Very annoying.  Hence the floppy drive replacement (we can't afford new PC's as a whole, so this is a stopgap to get us to another fiscal year).  

I've been encouraging patrons who are even remotely savvy to check for deals at local shops--Staples, CompUSA, etc.--on USB drives.  You can buy a rather ridiculous amount of storage for like 20 bucks, and I think it's worth it to them if they're moving from machine to machine.  One of our IT guys expressed a concern about plugging in a little hard drive, essentially, to the network, but I think it's a risk we take to offer better service.

My 2 cents and then some.
Louise