Public Services Steering Committee
May
4, 1999
Minutes
Members Present: Carol Turner, Carol Drum,
Rich Bennett, David Hickey, LeiLani Freund, Gary Cornwell, Bill Covey, John
Ashcraft, Tom Minton, Jan Swanbeck
1. Public Machines
The question was raised as to whether printers
should be attached to the public machines in the stacks. Bill
suggested that if printers were not needed, it might be good to
use IMACs because they are all-in-one computers that can be easily
secured. Another possibility would be to use small, low-end computers.
Most of these are now priced below $1,000.
Gary Cornwell asked if patrons would have access only
to terminal LUIS with no access to the web,
or if they would have access to WebLUIS, in which case
access to other parts of the web would need to be filtered
out. A discussion followed regarding this matter. One
concern about patrons having access to the web in the stacks
was that those areas are not monitored and there would be no
control over what the patrons did. Rich Bennett said that using terminal
LUIS rather than WebLUIS could cause problems in keeping terminal
LUIS up-to-date.
Another concern was the amount of staff time the machines
would require if web access were provided. John Ashcraft suggested
setting the machines up to provide internet access and then switch it
to terminal LUIS if the web access creates problems. He also suggested
installing the computers with web access this summer to see how
often they were used and what problems arise.
2. 98 Upgrades
John asked if Windows '98 needed to be installed
all public machines. He said some of the older machines don't have
adequate RAM for '98 and he wondered if the Windows '95 patch should
be put on those computers to make them Y2K compliant.
Bill said he wasn't convinced that the patch worked. He suggested
leaving '95 on the old computers until they are replaced. Leilani
said all the computers in the classroom should be upgraded at the same
time. Carol Turner said they would be replaced with the next shipment of
new computers. Bill also said that the library would not be switching to
Windows NT.
3.
Finals Week and Library Computers
Carol Turner announced that during
finals week, library public computers were used to create problems
in at least three instances, including one in which students were sent
a false message that an exam had been cancelled. She said the expectation
is that we will have to provide some type of security on the public
machines from now on. Bill said that there are many anonymous ways
to access the web and the UF policy makers are not favor of anonymous
authentications. He said that people who have Gatorlink accounts can dial
in from home, using UF as their service provider and it will look
like the message is coming from the library.
Rich suggested finding out if there is
a way to issue a pseudo-Gatorlink account that wouldn't let people access
if from a remote site. Carol said the library needs to identify who
is using library accounts, although it would be impossible to authenticate
everyone.
Since the proxy server has been in place,
the instances of email and chatting have decreased dramatically. Nothing is
100 percent secure because even with the proxy server, people can still
download Netscape and send email from that.
Everyone expressed
concerns about having web-accessible machines in areas that were not supervised
by staff. It was suggested that computers be put on the third floor
of Library West to see what happened. If the emailing privileges
are abused, the machines will be removed.
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