How do you maintain your public computers?
Librarians want to know.
Librarians want to know.
As I mentioned earlier, we've established a ritual of visiting each library before showing up in the bookmobile. As a trio of librarians and library users, we like to check out public libraries whether we're on a bookmobile or on vacation.
So when we set up shop at the Humboldt County Library just a few minutes ago, we expected we'd maintain our incognito status. This time, we were wrong.
An official-looking person (a librarian) approached us with suspicious glint in her eyes and a quizzical look on her face. "Are you hooked up to the Internet here?" she asked.
suspicous crew
A little context: since part of our visit to the Humboldt County Library is to participate in the Oysters & Ale Fundraiser for free wi-fi and increased broadband, we knew this library didn't yet have the means. We were using our portable modem and sharing a signal to our three laptops, and apparently a group of librarians--including the Director--were peering down at us from the second floor, trying to ascertain what kind of trouble we were getting into.
We explained our innocent intentions, and James mentioned our connection to the Internet Archive bookmobile and our participation in the fundraiser later this week. The librarian peered over at me and said, "Are you Sarah Washburn? I recognized you from the web site."
It turned out that the person sent to investigate our transgressions was Ronda Wittenberg, the librarian I've been chatting with over the past month! Apparently she and her co-workers were surveilling us for about 10 minutes, unsure of what we could be doing, looking all dastardly with our laptops in a triangle and cords dangling into an outlet into which we innocently (yet with perceived clandestine objectives) gained access.
It all turned out ok in the end, and Ronda was relieved it was the bookmobile crew happily using her library, and not some rogue band of rabble-rousers tapping in to the library’s network.
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Tell us about your daily routine maintaining public computers, or a moment when you were particularly proud. Don't forget that what might be "that's nothing" to you may be an "aha!" to someone else!
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you've come a long way baby
dear bookmobilers,
your pictrs on flickr tell a great (and often hilarious) story about your bookmobiling.
bookmobiles certainly have come a long way since the donkey-drawn models, or the huge stretch trailers with built-in shelves. the way you guys are doing it, anyone with a vw bug and a computer can become a self made bookmobile. not as comfy as the RV models for your cross country type trips, mind you, but very inspiring!
thank you!