[Web4lib] Question from a non-techie

[felicia cheney]

(Please excuse any cross posting)

Hello Brainy Librarians:

I am curious as to what other public libraries on regional networks using
for connections.  Currently, we serve a community of 4000 in the winter that
jumps to 25,000 in the summer.  We use Innovative Interfaces Millennium
software which is run through our network central office.   We have about 33
libraries running on this regional network (pretty small).  Three of the
smaller libraries are using cable connections with VPN's while the rest of
the libraries are using frame relay through Verizon fractional T1's.

Our particular library uses a partial T1 that gets about 384K download--we
have 10 staff computers (at least 7 in use at the same time).  Due to a
building disaster this previous winter, we were running the library out of
town hall with our connection over the cable which gave us up to a 12mb
download.  Needless to say, that's a pretty big difference and the entire
staff greatly benefited from the increased response time.

However, we are returning to our original T1/frame relay configuration any
minute due to security and bandwidth availability issues on the cable side.

My question is what set-ups do other public libraries have with their
regional networks?  I know the frame relay technology is becoming an old
technology, and I'm curious to see what other innovative libraries have done
out there to deal with the increased requirement for speed.  I realize we
can keep our patrons on the cable/fast side, but it seems silly to slow down
the workers.  It also seems foolish to have to buy separate
printers/scanners for separate networks because you don't want to risk the
security breach of bridging the networks.  There must be some other
solutions out there.

I would appreciate any information you might have.

Felicia Cheney
Edgartown Free Public Library
508 627-4221
www.edgartownlibrary.org