How do you maintain your public computers?
Librarians want to know.
Librarians want to know.
We've heard from a lot of libraries who have leased computers in their libraries, and since a librarian we were interviewing yesterday asked for more information on that topic, I thought I'd offer a sneak peak at what we're writing in the next Cookbook. If you've leased computers in your library, please share your experiences in a comment, and please also let us know who you are, so we chat more with you and include your ideas in the next Cookbook!
Budgeting: When you buy equipment, your expenses can vary wildly from year to year. With leased equipment you don’t have to work so hard to balance your annual budgets. Instead, the costs are spread evenly over the term of the lease (usually from one to three years).
Technology Currency: If your leases run for short periods of time, you’ll always have fairly up-to-date equipment (i.e., every three years or so, you’ll be returning the old computers and getting the latest, fastest computers.)
Disposal: It often takes time and money to properly dispose the outdated equipment you own. When your lease is up, however, you usually send the leased hardware back to the vendor, unless you decide to pay the buyout cost and keep the equipment.
Here's what some are saying...
"One of the advantages of doing the lease is that we have a consistent budget year to year to year, because one quarter of that lease is paid each year--so the budget is very well planned and consistent."
Thomas Edelblute
Anaheim Public Library, CA
"I could see if someone who doesn't have someone in-house, like me, that would be a great way to go. Then you don't have to worry about it; if it breaks you call somebody and they come out and fix it."
Matt Beckstrom
Lewis and Clark Library, MT
Please share your experiences with leasing, and look for the cons of leasing, tomorrow.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Take two minutes to tell us what you'd like to know more about so we can improve the resources we create. Thanks!
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!
Visit TechSoup to find donated and discounted software and technology products for your library.
Participate in a MaintainIT forum, where difficulties are aired and solutions are shared. Post your thoughts and be sure to share how you've used the MaintainIT Cookbook in your library.
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Time/Print Management Vendors
Your cookbook list of vendors should include Librarica LLC. They make the Cassie system which we use for time\print management in our libraries. We feell that Cassie is far superior to the other software on the market in that it costs far less and is much more elegant.
Time/Print Management Vendors
Jim,
That's a good suggestion. I'll add Cassie to our list a.s.a.p. You're not the only one to recommend it to us recently.
Chris