RE: Text-based OPAC?

["Riesner, Giles" <GRIESNER at ccbcmd dot edu>]

We have a similar situation to you in that we too have some OPACs
in remote locations that are unsupervised. We're in a 5-story building 
and only have service desks on 3 floors. We have OPAC only PCs set 
up on all but the Main floor. 

We're currently using older PCs (733's) with Windows XP and just a 
browser installed that is set up to ONLY get to the library catalog. 
We used the lowest available PCs because they ONLY need to access 
the catalog. This was very trivial to do.

Our Catalog Cluster on the main floor is set up as "Research" stations 
that also access the databases and they are being upgraded to 2.8 GHz
machines.

Please feel free to drop me a line if you want details. I can give
you information on how we've locked things down. It's much easier
than trying to find DOS drivers and telnet programs these days.

Giles W. Riesner Jr., Library Tech Support
Community College of Balto. Co. - Catonsville
800 S. Rolling Rd., Baltimore MD 21228  USA
Tel/V-Mail 	1-410-455-4245
Email:      griesner at ccbcmd dot edu



-----Original Message-----
From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org
[mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org]On Behalf Of David Brennan
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 11:59 AM
To: innopac at innopacusers dot org
Subject: Text-based OPAC?


Good morning-

In our library, we have several OPACs that are in very remote locations and are unsupervised for long periods. When they were as fully capable as our other OPACs, there were problems with misuse.
What we have done at this point is to force them to use the text-based catalog. However, this still requires a PC with Windows, and up until now, we've just absorbed these in our lease cycle. It seems a waste to me to make a 2.4GHz PC into a dumb terminal, so in order to cut a few PCs from our next lease cycle, I'm investigating replacing these with either extremely ancient PCs running DOS and a telnet client or a dedicated dumb terminal.
As for the PC option, I've gotten one to boot and get an IP address, but haven't yet figured out how I'll telnet into III - I'm a bit rusty at messing with all of the configurations, packet drivers and the like. I have no idea if there is a dumb terminal which is capable of DHCP and telnet - we have a few left from our old DRA system, but they run over the proprietary cabling from 10 years ago - no luck there.
Has anyone had experience with this type of setup?
Thanks,

David

============================
David Brennan, MLS
Electronic Services Librarian
Clifford E. Barbour Library
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
616 N. Highland Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15206
412-441-3304 x2256
412-362-2329 (FAX)
dbrennan at pts dot edu
http://www.barbourlibrary.org
============================
Ignorance must certainly be bliss or there wouldn't be so many people so resolutely pursuing it.
============================




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