Trouble is John, that what you and I have talked about is not clearly
reflected in recent voting.

And yes, your seasonal variation is a major failure area for the current
system.  If it takes me 25 timespans to get my permissions varied by the
time of the day then it will take you 300 of them (assuming you want a
full year coded in).  This is probably the reason why lorensbergs are
shy about claiming it as an existing feature.

There is an archival open hours table from 5.0 SR5 so that takes away
some of the need to model 12 months at a time (It lets you change the
spans but keep the integrity of your usage stats).

Tom van de Bilt.
ICT Manager.  Libraries, Archives and Information.
Cambridgeshire County Council
01223 699038

-----Original Message-----
From: lis-pub-libs: UK Public Libraries
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Usher, John
Sent: 14 February 2013 18:18
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Question about Child Only PCs

'...What Lorensbergs customers should be pushing for is a complete
overhaul of timespans and price classes in netloan...'

And how many times has this been pushed for, Mr Ex-Lorensbergs?   Have
we not had lengthy conversations on this topic when you wore another
hat? Hmm?

But even I was surprised to learn from this that we could use this to:

        '...designate PCs for use by children only at selected times of
day...'

Good for an open plan arrangement - but that doesn't help if the PCs are
in a dedicated Children's area which 'unaccompanied adults' (sounds odd
- doesn't it?) are excluded from for reasons of child safety. Parents
and carers might be allowed on by staff override if accompanying a child
in the library.

Don't know about others, but we also have the very odd situation of
adding additional time (mornings/afternoons) to children's PCs in the
school holidays (another Timespan issue), then taking some of that time
away by 'Dead Time' when events occur in the children's area which
public PC use might interfere with!

Now we're staring at the possibility of Thin Client/VDI for public PCs
where we could change mode of use at a whim, and totally disregard what
the Booking system says!


Complex, isn't it?

JU


John Usher
ICT Manager
Library and Heritage Services
Islington Council
Central Library
2 Fieldway Crescent
LONDON N5 1PF

Tel: 020 7527 6920
Mobile: 07825 098 223
Fax: 020 7527 6926
Alternative contact: Michelle Gannon - 020 7527 6907

www.islington.gov.uk


How to get to Central Library:
http://www.islington.gov.uk/Education/Libraries/Local/Central.asp





-----Original Message-----
From: lis-pub-libs: UK Public Libraries
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Van de Bilt Thomas
Sent: 14 February 2013 17:47
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [LIS-PUB-LIBS] Question about Child Only PCs

Just to pick up on a small point from Paul

        ...We have logged a call with Insight - the suppliers of iCAM
which we use to manage the authentication, requesting the ability to be
able to designate PCs for use by children only at selected times of day.
If this is going to be a requirement for all library authorities it may
help to get the issue raised up the development list for both Insight
and Lorensberg if every authority logs their own call....

Netloan can actually already do this, just not particularly well.  Using
the timespans feature you can divide each day up into multiple sections
and then apply different permissions (price classes) for each.

The big problem here is that the timespan system in netloan is a huge
mess.  Timespans are how open hours are modelled and it's the least
friendly part of the whole application.  I suspect for most people it's
so incomprehensible that varying permissions by time of the day is a
complete non-starter.

What Lorensbergs customers should be pushing for is a complete overhaul
of timespans and price classes in netloan.  These are the kinds of
fundamental architectural fixes that we should be pushing for, rather
than eye-candy stuff like displaying pop-up messages on login.

I'm afraid I don't know about ICAM but if Insight were to blink first
and develop something then obviously that strengthens the lobby within
the netloan user community significantly so I'm all in favour of people
pushing it there too.

Tom van de Bilt.
ICT Manager.  Libraries, Archives and Information.
Cambridgeshire County Council
01223 699038


________________________________

From: Harrison, Paul [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 14 February 2013 12:35
To: Van de Bilt Thomas
Subject: RE: Question about Child Only PCs


Hi Tom

The decision on whether to provide child only PCs is taken at the
individual library level based on local conditions, so I do not have a
figure to hand, but I would estimate that we have maybe 30-40 of our 560
PCs set aside for that purpose.  I do know that we are looking closely
at PC usage at the moment and the child only PCs have been identified as
being significantly underused - our take up rate is just under 50 %
across the whole estate so the child PCs will on average be probably
around 30% - we only have figures at a branch level, not across the
whole estate.

We have logged a call with Insight - the suppliers of iCAM which we use
to manage the authentication, requesting the ability to be able to
designate PCs for use by children only at selected times of day.  If
this is going to be a requirement for all library authorities it may
help to get the issue raised up the development list for both Insight
and Lorensberg if every authority logs their own call.  However, as
things stand, we are still leaving it to each library to decide whether
they want to retain Child only PCs or not.

As for the cut off point, for the purposes of PC log ons, the cutoff age
is 16 at which point the customer becomes a young adult, and we do have
a couple of libraries around that have a PC designated for sole use by
young adults, and we also have some that are for adults only - usually
where we have had instances of disruptive behaviour in a library by
teenagers.  However, I do not have figures for the usage levels on these
machines.

Apart from those few adult only pcs, children can use the rest of the
estate if they wish, and indeed we have a number of libraries where we
don't make any distinction at all about who can use any of the PCs.

Regards

Paul


Paul Harrison
Electronic Library Manager
Norfolk Library & Information Service
LG045, County Hall , Martineau Lane, Norwich NR1 2UA
01603 222580
0781 846 4985
[log in to unmask]
http://www.facebook.com/norfolklibrariesUK
http://twitter.com/NorfolkLibs
************************************************************************
**********
Everything Starts with Reading
At the moment I am reading Gallows Curse by Karen Maitland
************************************************************************
**********





________________________________

From: lis-pub-libs: UK Public Libraries
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Van de Bilt Thomas
Sent: 13 February 2013 22:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Question about Child Only PCs



Here in Cambridgeshire about 13% of our computers are reserved solely
for the use of children but lately these have had quite poor uptake
compared to general use PCs.

I wonder what percentage of other people's estates are reserved for
children and what sort of use rate these average?  It would help if you
could qualify this by explaining what the age cut-off is and whether
children may also use general use PCs.

Thanks in advance,

Tom van de Bilt.
ICT Manager.  Libraries, Archives and Information.
Cambridgeshire County Council





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