Tag Archives: wireless-enabled laptops

Why the whole world doesn’t know about librarians

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I thought this comic strip on the topic of librarians, forwarded to me by Ashley, was pretty cute. It also touches on a sore point with me, that librarians are not that great at marketing themselves. By marketing, I don’t mean shameless self-promotion. Instead, I’m talking about making clear to their institutions how integral and vital their role and the role of libraries is to their success and to society in general, especially in this digital age. Over and over and over again, I am reminded of how persistently overlooked and underrepresented libraries and library issues are in the general scheme of things in my local environment. It’s incredible, especially given the facts…like huge (and growing) library website statistics, huge (and growing) use of online resources, huge influx of people in the library, especially on Monday nights when I am at the reference desk and there are literally students lining the walls because of lack of seating space. And most of them are using their wireless-enabled laptops or ones that they checked out at the circulation desk. I could go on and on and I get tired of beating the drums about this, yet it is so important because there is a pervasive culture of thought that relegates the library to a print-only, technological backwater. It’s very frustrating.

Wireless laptop usage

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Yesterday I posted a query on the Web4Lib discussion list about wireless laptop usage in my library. Shortly thereafter I got an email from fellow UIUC GSLIS alum Jenny Levine, of The Shifted Librarian fame, asking if she could post the information I shared on the list on her blog. Click here to read her posting!

What I asked Web4Lib’ers was as follows. I’d love to hear from anyone who has comparative statistics:

“Taylor University’s Zondervan Library serves a mostly undergraduate student population of about 1,700. We have four wireless-enabled laptops available for checkout for general purpose uses including web browsing and library research. Our spring term is ending and out of curiosity I decided to tally up the circulation stats for them. It seemed by my observation that they were quite heavily used, in spite of the fact that we also have a large computer lab and several thin client workstations, but I wanted to know specifics. I found out that for the spring term (about 90 days in length), three out of the four laptops averaged close to 170 checkouts each. The fourth laptop was out of commission for most of the time. The total number of circulations for all of them was just under 500. I’m a mathematical ignoramus but I think that averages out to about 5 1/2 circulations per day. How does this compare with other libraries who circulate wireless laptops? I’m just curious to know if this is high, low, average.”