Webinar Recap: Louise Alcorn on Wireless Use Policies

Kudos to Louise Alcorn and Kami Griffiths for making the potentially dull topic of policies anything but dull! Today’s 30-minute webinar provided a lot of food for thought in a short amount of time. I was familiar with Louise and her work before the webinar because she literally wrote the book on wireless networking in libraries. During the webinar, however, I also discovered that she and my friend and fellow Johnson County (KS) resident Josh Neff are old pals! Josh was a webinar participant today, too, and told me that he and Louise went to summer camp together many, many years ago and recently got in touch again on Facebook – ah, it’s a wonderfully small and socially networked world!

Wireless use policies is a topic that we've devoted time to in the past here at MaintainIT. Last fall, Louise wrote about wireless policies for libraries here on the MaintainIT blog. 'Meal Plan 4' in Recipes for a 5-Star Library is all about Wireless Acceptable Use Policies (available in PDF here). In today’s webinar, the 40 participants were able to ask questions and interact while learning more about the topic.
I have set up wireless in libraries and I have helped libraries write their policies, but one of the things I have not done and have wondered about, is the best way to make sure that users of your wireless network actually see (and hopefully read) the wireless acceptable use policy. Louise talked about captive portals (something I think I have simply referred to as splash pages – are they the same thing?). A product that was mentioned is m0n0wall and I see that Jean Montgomery discussed that in the cookbook, Recipes for a 5-Star Library, too. Any other suggestions or feedback about captive portal software?
If you missed the webinar, never fear! It is archived on WebJunction. Thanks, Louise and Kami, for a great session today!

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