Hi Peter - I asked a similar question a few weeks ago.

Below are the responses I received. No one asked me to anonymise so...

I’d be very interested to hear what response you get back re this issue. I posted a similar query on the PN JISCMAIL and received the following responses, but two isn’t much to go on! In East Sussex we are about to start a project to upgrade our PN to Win7 and are interested in hearing what other authorities have done.

From East Sussex (and below via East Sussex in answer to a similar question)

“We recently went out to tender for the replacement of our People's Network PCs, and we did not specify what types of devices we wanted - rather we invited the bidders to recommend suitable replacement devices. All the responses we had proposed a straightforward like for like replacement - probably because of the security requirements we had for restoring devices to clean states between sessions. So we now have Win 7 devices installed (we could not go for Win 8 because our PCs are authenticated using iCAM and at the time of bidding there was a question about compatibility between Win 8 and iCAM).

We do have public wifi access in all libraries, although there is a limit on the maximum number of concurrent sessions we can run. We do also have a number of tablets we use to run taster sessions in libraries, but they are all moderated by library staff, and are not permanently available on desks in the library.“

from Norfolk

“We upgraded a couple of years ago. The major change is that we could upgrade software so that sites and files were accessible to our customers (it's amazing how many "responsive," "browser-agnostic" official web sites require Internet Explorer version x, Flash version y and Adobe Acrobat Reader version z). WiFi in most of our libraries and the creative use of wireless dongles with the online basics workers allows a lot of good bring-your-own-device activity but the statics are still essential for a lot of our customers, particularly now that we're piloting Universal Credit and having to provide a lot of support for Universal Jobsmatch.”

From Rochdale.

And direct:
"I’m using a product called ‘Airwatch’. Our IT have been really helpful in setting up an iPad as a test subject, to see how well it can be controlled, locked down etc.

AirWatch can set up separate “scenarios”, for example we have a “young persons” scenario that will only load in painting and drawing apps, and has no outgoing access to the internet. Then there is a “Local History” scenario where relevant apps, including browsers and word processing apps are loaded together with wifi access. On another scenario we have just one app continually running – a painting app for kids – where even the Home button won’t function. The scenario’s can be set up remotely – on a PC in our case – and then activated per iPad. Apparently it can run on laptops, touchpads etc., as well. IT first acquired this to lock down usage of the councils Blackberry phones.
Another feature is that AirWatch can track the location of the iPad it’s installed on too!
We’re still in testing with the system but can let you know more info in the future, if you like."

From Rochdale.

"Your email regarding Chromebooks, tablets and devices was passed to me as we are currently looking to make a purchase for the Perth & Kinross public libraries and utilise the PN wi-fi for staff use. The public are already invited to access the PN wi-fi using their own devices using their library log-in details.
Our Peoples Network wi-fi provision is a managed service, supported by JANET which offers ‘guest’ network to our patrons. We invite patrons to bring in their own tablet devices and as yet have not made purchases of any tablet devices for the public. We have however started purchasing and establishing laptops in site libraries to improve the flexibility within spaces. Site staff took it upon themselves to add EM security tags to the laptops (under strict instructions that they are not to de-magnetized!) and each laptop is configured with our PN firewall as agreed with Council IT. One issue is that laptops, as yet cannot be ‘booked’ via our PN provider – so we have posted a message on the website to let users know to contact the site library if they are unable to see an available bookable computer.
We are dipping our toe into purchasing tablet’s for staff to use in the Library space. Unfortunately we are getting advice from Council IT they can only support devices that run Windows – which would limit our service offer considering almost all our e-resources require downloadable apps that are not compatible with Windows. Some projects have instigated the purchase of e-readers and we’ve been able to manage the security by treating them as ‘long term-loan’ items. These tablets are brought in ‘for a service’ to ensure firewall, virus checks are updated etc."

From Perth and Kinross.

"Please can you share any responses that you get. About fortnight ago I asked a similar question about sanitising IOS and Android devices between uses. The silence was deafening. There’s no equivalent of netloan, icam or mypc for Android ChromeOS or IOS so for me whatever we do feels like leaping backwards 10 years. The fundamental problem is that if the device doesn’t know who’s using it then it doesn’t know when that user has changed and that it should get rid of anything private. You have to solve authentication before you can solve sanitising the user environment. Seems like there’s plenty of mobile device management out there to take care of updates and patching though.

Since our primary interest seems to be in bolting tablets to desks I think what I would do is by a windows 8 tablet without a keyboard or pointing device and then try as far as possible to lock people out of the classic shell. It has to be windows 8 and not RT because lorensbergs and insight media don’t support ARM. I have to question the point though. It feels more like a cheap wow factor than a meaningful addition to our offer.

A more realistic use for tablets might be to use them as low cost catalogue search kiosks. That’s something that we’ve just started looking into"

And...

"You might be interested in talking to Lincolnshire about the idea of giving staff ipads for roving LMS access. They’re doing this with Spydus but I’m not sure if they are actually live yet. They gave a rundown of it at the Spun UK conference. The only detail that I really remember was that they found that they needed to buy additional Bluetooth barcode readers rather than use the camera."

From Cambridgeshire.




-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Aspinall [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 12 December 2014 12:30
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Touch Screen Devices

Currently all our public access PCs are traditional keyboard and mouse, but as part of an update of our equipment we are looking into making some touchscreen devices available for public use.

If you have revamped your IT equipment with touchscreens have you completely or partially replaced "traditional" PCs ?

What has been the user experience ?

Any particular models you could recommend ?

Thank you