Recommendations from Champlin Grant Workshop

Peter Bennett, Rick Payette, Cindy St. Amour and Ginny Taken held a workshop on May 3 to assist directors and tech personnel to decide what to request from the Champlin Foundations this year. The following is a synopsis of the information from that meeting.

It is a good idea to start replacing terminals with pc’s now. This is because:

• PC’s are inexpensive

• Ameritech will be using PC Reliance, an offline backup system, and it requires a PC

• Peter is upgrading the network and we need to get rid of terminal servers to help the network—easier to troubleshoot and maintain.

• Old PC’s (those 3 years old and older) need to be replaced because they are not necessarily
• Y2K compliant

Even a Pentium 100 will be obsolete. Office 97 will barely run and Office 2000 will NOT run.

IE and Netscape will barely run.

RECOMMENDATION: Plan on using PC’s for 3 years, replace them during the fourth year.

COST: Budget $1500 per system

Inkjets are fine for lower volume printing.

Lasers cost less to operate.

COST: $300 for an inkjet printer

$700 for a laser printer

$30 more for a new cable for each printer

RECOMMENDATION: Fortres 101--good for securing operating systems from the public

COST: $395 Per library—CLAN is unable to get a campus-wide license

This is an offline circulation system—for when the system is down. It requires PC’s at the circ desk.

COST: $2500 per library

Switches are easier to troubleshoot and manage bandwidth better than hubs. Don’t buy a generic network card, because switches don’t like cheap ones or old crummy ones.

CLAN-ordered PC’s include network cards, but some others may NOT.

RECOMMENDATION:

• Replace hubs in CLAN telecomm closets with switches,
• Replace LAN hubs with switches

COST: for a Baystack 450 24T switch, $4000 each, including installation

Plain paper models are easier to buy supplies for

Thermal paper models are quieter

COST: between $275 and $350

• Think about replacing old category 3 cable with new category 5 cable.

2 possible contractors are DCS, Electro Standard Labs.

COST: Estimate $250 per cable run (could be as low as $100)

Get rid of the old CLSI lasers.

Most Metrologic 950 or 951 models will work with a PC if you install a keyboard wedge (about $125)

RECOMMENDATION: Contact A,R & B for info on new lasers.

A few items that were discussed:

Keep a record of what is installed on each PC you own. Include date of purchase, software, port or license #, etc. While there is some fairly good software that could help you, it does not work well with security programs like Fortres.

LAN’s are internal to each library and therefore your choice. However, CLAN can help with:

Windows NT, NT Server 4.0 (not 3.51)

DataComm , Network 6 can do LAN work for you and we can recommend them.

Don’t know anything about Test Point’s LAN work.

Hope Library had big problems with Cubix.

DCS’s Citrix is not recommended for CLAN libraries. It is nice, but Peter has reservations about it. It is your choice if you want to do it. Contact Peter for specifics.

Rick is checking to see if there are any organizations that will recycle old equipment.

CLAN is forming an equipment pool. We can use working 486’s with NIC cards, monitors, 8Mgs of RAM. Also could use some good terminals (for now). Call Rick if you have anything to donate.

We will conduct a lottery if there are many people who want what we have to offer.

IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER: Keep asking. If you don’t get funded this year, ask again next year. Keep trying.

It sometimes helps to make your priorities very clear—specify what you need/want most, so if Champlin funds some items and not others, you will stand a better chance of getting what you want.

There will be another Champlin request workshop on May 27, 1999 at WAR. 9:30 AM. This same information will be discussed.