Introduction

We wanted public workstations at which a user can sit down and do whatever s/he needs to with a CD, even if s/he had never used it before and the Government Publications reference desk is closed.

To achieve this goal, we would have to provide unmediated access to and support for:

• The CDs and Related Applications
• User Guides
• Printers, Storage Media (e.g. floppy & Zip disks) and Electronic Transport Of Files (e.g. FTP)
• An Integrated Interface

The CDs and Related Applications

To give users unmediated access to the CDs, they would have to be always ready for users.

Traditionally, administrators have used medium-specific hardware such as CD towers and software such as Local Area Networks (LANs) for this task and that is how we handled some of our titles in our previous configuration. However, both medium-specific hardware and LAN software are expensive. Also, this approach increases the number of points at which a breakdown can occur, while potentially lengthening the downtime because new parts may be required for hardware problems and LAN administration may be limited to an institution's IT department. Finally, all tangible storage media are inherently and often quickly obsolete. Sinking large sums of money into a media-specific hardware solution was deemed to be inappropriate given other options now available to us.

In consultation with the University Libraries Information Technology Services (ITS), we decided to forgo the traditional approach and to put the bulk of our time and effort into a reliable configuration which put all the installed titles on the hard drive of one of the new workstations we would be receiving. Then that original hard drive would be imaged and used to create the rest of the public workstations. The original would be saved in case of emergencies, thus simplifying disaster recovery.

However, we found that there were some fundamental obstacles to loading CDs in their entirety onto hard drives. Namely, many CDs were written on the assumption that each would be the only CD loaded on a computer and that putting in the disk every time each was used would be convenient. Given the above, both of these assumptions conflicted with our needs.

To resolve the conflict, we decided to use a CD-ROM emulation program. This program resolves the conflict because it creates a virtual CD drive and inserts a virtual CD. Thus, effectively, each CD is the only one loaded and the disk is inserted into the drive.

Because the University Libraries has not purchased pubic workstation licenses for MS Office, we had to add freely available viewer software to Mount Rushmore to be sure the contents of all of the CDs would be usable. The viewers we added were the dBase viewer, the Excel95 viewer for Lotus 1-2-3 files and pre-Excel97 Excel files and the Excel97 viewer for the rest.

Since some titles have been supplanted by web versions, or the web version is in some way better or the CD has internal links to the Web, whatever configuration we also chose had to allow access to the web. In order to increase our control over the most exposed of our public workstations, we have installed Public Browser. Public Browser allows us to control virtually every aspect of Internet Explorer (IE), the browser it works with. That control lets us limit the customization users can do and helps minimize the security holes in IE. For more information on public browsers, see Does Your Library Need a Different Browser? in Library Journal, 7/15/02.

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User Guides

In order for a user to work with a CD s/he has never seen before when there's no librarian around to ask for help, s/he must have ready access to a user guide.

Since 4 of 5 of the new workstations wouldn't have access to word processing software and since it's often most helpful to users if they can see a picture rather than wade through lots of text, the best format for the user guides was html. It also meant that we could embed a link that would start the software on the user guide web page. If we put it at the bottom (as we did), the user would have to at least scan the user guide before starting.

We assumed that users would do no more than scan the user guide until they needed it, so we wanted to be sure that when the CD was started, the user guide would remain on the screen somewhere. To achieve this goal we included a brief javascript script in all the links that would always open them in new windows. Thus, the user can simply look at the task bar along the bottom and maximize the guide when s/he needs it. We did find that creating the guides (which entailed making sure that they're exactly right; creating pictures to replace large chunks of text and proof-reading, etc.) took up at least 50% of the time spent on this project.

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Printers, various storage media (e.g. floppy disks, Zip disks) and electronic transport of large files (e.g. FTP)

Printing at the ULibraries is networked. It works straightforwardly for Windows programs, but not for the DOS-window programs. Often there is a significant delay (30 seconds to a minute) between when the program reports that the printing is complete and the networked printing dialog box appears.

File utilities provided for users are WS_FTP and Winzip. These are handled via links just like all the other programs on the hard drive. University Libraries policy prohibits email use on all but a select group of designated workstations. However, because there is no filtering in the Libraries, there's nothing to prevent them from sending their files by web-based email, except perhaps limits on attachments sizes. Telnet is disabled on 4 of 5 workstations, so there's no direct access to Unix environments. We provide patrons with space on a public FTP server, but for security reasons we only offer access during reference hours. However, if a user has an account on another server, they can FTP anytime because the software is always available. Of course, users may also save their work onto 3.5 and Zip disks.

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Integrated Interface

The decision to use html for the guides also determined the format of the interface. Again, html provided many benefits for us such as transparant switching from local web pages and applications to remote web pages and applications. The html interface also inspired an elegant method of launching the CDs. Instead of having to point users to the Desktop or Start Menu to find a shortcut for the CD, we embedded into the guides links that would launch the CDs.

We gained four more workstations for searching the catalog. We also gained four workstations for full use of high-bandwidth web-based statistical sources such as SourceOECD and Statistical Universe.

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