How do you maintain your public computers?
Librarians want to know.
Librarians want to know.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
MaintainIT is producing a series of monthly 30-minute webinars focused on topics from the Cookbooks and designed to get you started on a project today. June's topic: Notes on setting up wireless at your library with Sharon Moreland and Liz Rea from the NE Kansas Library System (NEKLS).
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.
learning about technology and software
When it comes to new software, I always avoid the user manuals, How-To books and resources, and other such tools until after I've grabbed the software (or whatever the technology is, such as a handheld device, etc.), installed it, and fired it up.
I use stuff to learn about it. I was to see how solid it is. In all my years of using computers and other tech toys (going back to 1978), I've never read a manual prior to using anything. Only one piece of software was so un-intuitive that I had to refer to the manual to figure out how to do anything with it! Yes, despite having to turn to the manual to even begin using the software, I did give it a fair trial, and in the end, no, it wasn't adopted.
A well-developed piece of software or other technological gizmo, whether a handheld device (phone, tablet, etc.), or anything else, should be designed so it's user-friendly. Basically, if it isn't intuitive, the design is all wrong.