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These Minimum Technical Requirements (MTR) are effective October 1,
2005 and will expire September 30, 2009. All Federal depository
libraries must meet these requirements in order to keep pace with
Federal agency information dissemination practices and to fulfill their
obligation to provide service to Government information in electronic
formats. Not all libraries have to meet the specifications for
"cartographic data use" contained within. Libraries will continue to be
evaluated using a "functional approach."
This document supersedes the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) "2004 Minimum Technical Requirements for Public Access Workstations in Federal Depository Libraries." See "Related Issues and Considerations" for more information.
| Processor |
Intel chip, 1 GHz Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon processor minimum.
- FOR CARTOGRAPHIC DATA USE: 1.5 GHz processor minimum
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Memory
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256 MB (expandable) minimum. (DDR SDRAM - Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic RAM)
- FOR CARTOGRAPHIC DATA USE: 512 MB DDR-RAM
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| Port |
- One (1) Serial
- Two (2) Universal Serial Bus (USB)
- One (1) Parallel
- One (1) P/S-2 Mouse
- One (1) SVGA Video (If video is built into system board.)
- One (1) IEE1394 Firewire port
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I/O bus
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PCI. Should have at least four available PCI or shared PCI/ISA slots after system is configured for delivery.
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Video
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64 or 128 bit PCI interface SVGA controller. Should come with 16MB
Windows RAM (WRAM) or Video RAM (VRAM), and be expandable. Recommend
the selected device provide MPEG hardware acceleration.
- FOR CARTOGRAPHIC DATA USE: 64 or 128 bit PCI interface SVGA controller with 32 MB WRAM or VRAM
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Audio
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Sound Blaster PCI64 sound card or compatible
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| Drive Bays
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- One (1) 3.5" half-height (HH) external.
- Two (2) 3.5" HH Internal.
- See Related Issues and Considerations below for information on 5.25" drives.
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Hard Disk Drives
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40 gigabytes (GB) capacity or greater, partitioned into smaller drives
for quicker access time. EIDE (enhanced integrated drive electronics)
interface that conforms to the ATA/100 specification. Rotational speed
of 7,200 rpm. 4MB cache memory. Consider additional hard drive space
(60GB) for online video use, to increase the number of CDs that can be
installed or to allow for electronic files to be stored.
- FOR CARTOGRAPHIC DATA USE: 60.0 GB or greater capacity, or network connectivity that provides the same.
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Removable/External Storage
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3.5" 1.44 MB drive. Use an older system for 5.25" floppy conversion.
- Also, if system does not have internal CD-R/RW drive, strongly recommend additional external and/or exchangeable drives, especially drives such as CD-R/RW, Zip or Jaz drives for downloading files too large to fit on a regular floppy disk or for large scale back-up.
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DVD Drive
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6x speed minimum, 8x recommended. Ensure compatibility with CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-Rs. Must have a MPEG-2 decoder card for video.
- FOR CARTOGRAPHIC DATA USE: 8x DVD. Single platter or changer design. Should support all available standard CD formats. Avoid proprietary I/O designs.
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CD-r/rw Drive
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Most new systems now come equipped with a CD-R/RW drive. Look for rotational speeds of 20x10x40 (read/write/rewrite)
- FOR CARTOGRAPHIC DATA USE: 20x10x40x.
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Monitor
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17" Super VGA (SVGA) Multimedia monitor with a dot pitch range between .22 to .27 mm. Look for a high refresh rate of at least 60MHz. Consider flat panel (15" or larger) for staff or in public areas with limited space. The dot pitch is not an issue with LCD monitors but, rather, look for a viewing angle of at least 140 degrees.
- FOR CARTOGRAPHIC DATA USE: 21" monitor, Super VGA (SVGA), with at least 85 MHz vertical refresh rate at 1024x768 resolution non-interlaced, 0.28 mm or smaller dot pitch; display card which supports 1024x768 resolution at 70 MHz or faster.
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Printer
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Ink Jet or laser printer. Must support PostScript. 10MB Memory, minimum. More recommended if using PostScript or color. Consider purchasing a color printer for clearer output of color maps and graphical representations.
- FOR CARTOGRAPHIC DATA USE: Color ink jet printer, 36", 600 dpi, 80 MB or more memory, or access to a comparable networked printer.
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Keyboard and Pointing Device
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Microsoft-compatible keyboard, plus mouse or other compatible device. Strongly recommend ergonomically-designed products.
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Internet Connectivity
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Local Area Network with TCP/IP. 10/100 MB Ethernet network interface card (Strongly Recommended), or
- Broadband connections such as Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) or Cable
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Operating System
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Most new computers with a Windows-based operating system come preinstalled with either Windows NT, 2000 or Windows XP. XP Home and XP Professional have security and virus protection features well suited for public access workstations.
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Client Software
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World Wide Web graphical browser with forms support. Java-enabled browsers such as Internet Explorer 4 or Netscape Navigator 4 or greater are required for use of some online databases. IE 5.5 or Netscape 6.2 are recommended.
- It is recommended that workstations have virus protection software installed and regular updates scheduled.
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Viewers
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WWW graphical browser (see above) that handles both GIF and JPEG graphics. Viewers for other formats such as tiff, wpd, doc, xls, dbf, mdb, and pdf should also be available. Later versions of pdf viewers have a search capability. Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 supports assistive screen readers. A multimedia player(s) to access rm, mpeg, avi and mov formats.
- FOR CARTOGRAPHIC DATA USE: GEOTIFF file viewer. Viewing software for raster data, such as Photo Shop Pro or Print Shop.
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Application Software
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If the library offers services that require applications software, consider an integrated "office suite" product such as Microsoft Office, Corel WordPerfect Office or Lotus SmartSuite. Otherwise:
- Database - dBASE file format compatible or dBASE and ASCII comma delimited file importing database management software; useful to have fixed field format (SDF) importability.
- Spreadsheet - Lotus.WK1 file format compatible software; support for other formats such as Excel and Quattro Pro.
- Word Processing - Software (Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, WordPro, etc.) capable of importing major text file formats, e.g., ASCII text and RTF files.
- Mapping Software - FOR CARTOGRAPHIC DATA USE: GEOTIFF file viewer. Viewing software for raster data, such as Photo Shop Pro or Print Shop.
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Also published in Administrative Notes. These requirements were originally issued as the "2004 Recommended Specifications for Public Access Workstations in Federal Depository Libraries" in Administrative Notes, v. 25, # 8-9, (July/August 2004).
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Depository Administration 
