Award Report - Laptop Lending and UPS Project
The AECOM Library is in the midst of a major renovation. An integral part of this project was the construction of five group study rooms. Each of these rooms is equipped with a 42″ LCD monitor. The rooms are available to all members of the AECOM community for student group projects, PhD dissertation defense, library training, presentations and meetings. With funding from the NN/LM MAR Technology Improvement Award, the Library purchased three Dell Latitude D630 laptop computers, which can be borrowed from the Library’s Circulation Desk. The laptops connect easily to the LCD monitors with a VGA cable. They have been loaded with the following software: Microsoft Office 2003, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Internet Explorer, Firefox, SciFinder Scholar, QuickTime, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Player. The AECOM Library’s laptop lending policy can be viewed at http://library.aecom.yu.edu/library/laptops.htm. There is a record for the laptops in the Library’s catalog, which allows patrons to see if laptops are available for loan.
When laptops are returned, Circulation Desk staff will be able to restore them to their original configuration using Ghost 12.0 software (also purchased through the NN/LM MAR technology Improvement Award). This will prevent system changes, viruses, and other “infelicities” from being passed on to future users.
The AECOM Graphic Arts Center designed special decals for us. These decals are affixed to the tops of the laptops with an extremely strong adhesive. The hope is that in addition to “branding,” the decals will serve as an additional theft deterrent.
The laptops will go into service in October as part of our celebration of National Medical Librarians Month. Response from patrons who have helped test them has been positive. Although many of our patrons own their own laptops, they do not always carry them. They appreciate the option of borrowing one from the library.
The UPS Project
During the past four years the AECOM Library has experienced three major power outages. The first was the blackout that affected the Northeast in August 2003. The second, in March 2007, was due to an electrical fire in our building. The third, in August 2007, was due to another fire in front of our building. Because the Library’s web sever and EZproxy remote access server were not connected to a UPS (battery backup power supply), these electrical outages caused them to power off without going through the proper shutdown procedures. Fortunately this did not lead to data loss or corruption. AECOM faculty, students, staff and residents from our five affiliated hospitals use the Library’s web site and remote access system to connect to our electronic resources. In order to protect our servers in the future, the electricity in the Library’s server room was switched to the emergency ground, so they will automatically receive power from the College’s emergency generators in the event of another power failure. Because there could still be an interruption of power before the emergency generators kick in, the library used the NN/LM MAR Technology Award to purchase an APC Smart-UPS 1000XL backup battery supply. The Smart-UPS 100XL will supply electricity to the Library’s servers during this gap. Additional software was purchased to allow the servers to power down gracefully in the event that power is not restored. this software has not yet been configured.
Nancy R. Glassman- D. Samuel Gottesman Library- Albert Einstein College of Medicine-Bronx, NY
