Letter to Library Board of Directors for their Monday (6/2/2008) meeting: Written 5/31/2008
Library Board of the City of Centreville
Monday, June 2nd, 2008
Recommendations for the Computer Lab in Centreville Library
Dear Library Board,
On behalf of Valerie and the Centreville Library we would like to offer reccommendations for improvements in the computer lab at the library. We are students from the University of Illinois enrolled in a class about networking computers, and we have appreciated the opportunity to put our classroom knowledge into practice in the Centreville Library. In the course of two weekends we have spent over twenty hours assessing and upgrading the exisiting computers in Centreville Library, and we plan on returning for one more weekend to complete our work.
At this point, we have installed several new CD burners, and thus we suggest that you begin purchasing blank CDs for use in the library. The intention for the CD burners and blank CDs is to burn open source software, which patrons can then take home and install on their home computers.
In addition, based on our work in the computer lab and through discussion with Valerie, we have identified other key items which could be purchased to greatly improve the usability of the library. We reccommend purchasing:
4-5 headphones
4 mice
4 mouse pads
These devices are a necessary investment for a public library. Headphones are needed to ensure privacy for the patrons if they need to listen to something in a public space. New mice that scroll properly are integral to patron use and comfortablility, and mouse pads ensure longevity of the actual mouse.
We also looked at the Centreville Library’s website (www.centrevillelibrary.org) and found that the information is from 2003. It would be great if the website could be updated to include the current hours, staff, and board of directors. The site is maintained by the Lewis & Clark Library System, and perhaps you could contact them to see how to go about getting the website up to date. The person to contact at Lewis & Clark is Leslie Bednar.
Finally, we ask for permission to reconfigure computer 0016342643. This is a computer donated by the Lewis & Clark Library System, and we would like to have approval before reinstalling the operating system in order to rid the computer of viruses that are slowing it down.
Thank you for your dedication to the upkeep of Centreville Library, and we appreciate your consideration of our suggestions.
Sincerely,
Students in LIS 451 Introduction to Networked Information Systems
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign