How do you maintain your public computers?
Librarians want to know.
Librarians want to know.
I've noticed that we humans tend to develop a personal relationship with our machines. We give them names, we decorate them, and they become an important part of our daily routines. But eventually the day comes along that a machine is no longer serving its purpose and we need to move on. What can you do with that old machine? In a MaintainIT webinar on October 30th, Jean Montgomery and Jim Lynch shared some ideas, including: rejuvenate, reuse, refurbish, recycle, and replace. The webinar has been archived so you can check that out if you weren't able to attend.
We were lucky to have TechSoup's Jim Lynch on hand to share his expertise. He's a computer refurbishing and recycling guru and directed us to various resources that I did not even know existed. Here are links to the sites he mentioned:
Community Microsoft Authorized Refurbishers http://www.techsoup.org/mar/marList.aspx
Hardware recyclers http://www.techsoup.org/recycle/donate
End-of-life electronics recyclers http://www.mygreenelectronics.org/
101 uses for AOL disks http://www.earthplaza.com/aoldisks/
Electronics Takeback Campaign approved electronics recyclers http://www.computertakeback.com/the_solutions/recyclers_map.cfm
Software to wipe the hard drive, including:
DBAN: http://www.dban.org/.
Killdisk: http://www.killdisk.com/ .
Bart’s Nuke http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/downloads/techstructure/page8033.cfm
The webinar was based on content from the brand new MaintainIT Cookbook, Planning for Success.
Thanks Jean and Jim for a great learning experience!
We have more webinars scheduled on topics from the new Cookbook. They are FREE! Register online and you will recieve a confirmation and a reminder email, too.
Technorati Tags: computers Jean Montgomery Jim Lynch library technology MaintainIT recycle refurbish 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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.
TechSoup's GreenTech initiative
hi there,
here's another resource to add to this impressive list: TechSoup's GreenTech intiative, where you'll find information on reducing paper, recycling computers, virtualization and much much more!
Be sure to visit the GreenTech Initiative in November to participate in and benefit from their reduce your paper use campaign. Look for tips, events, techniques, and shocking statistics on paper use next month.