4.8.08
Now if it only had a mini-fridge...
I'm a ranter. I rant. That's why I have a blog. I'm a nice guy though, somehow these things I type out don't really make it to my mouth, they take the spinal column freeway straight to my fingers. So if you're one of those people I'm talking about in this blog, please don't take this is as anything but constructive criticism, in the name of zarking fardwarks! I read this post from one of my favorite blogs, Tame The Web. The post is actually a quotation of another post on another site, one that talks about how libraries can ease the life of those they serve, in this case it would be the lives of the students who use said library. I fully applaud the fact that despite the fact that many of the things they're talking about implementing aren't easily done nor maintained just because they know it will be the most usable for their students. I also applaud the fact that they're offering choice, something that's heavily featured in the work world (to varying degrees) and the world in general. To some extent it mirrors some of the choices of my local university, where I attend, to keep Macs in a certain computer lab even when the rest of the campus switched over to PCs. I've heard much about the problems their IT department had in making sure all of the university's software (grading systems, degree reporting software, and others) worked seamlessly so the students wouldn't see any troubles in receiving credit for their hard-earned courses.
But to what degree does this need to be done? Offering a choice in browser? YES! I personally feel more comfortable and productive using both Safari and Firefox over IE. How about offering a choice of OS? Ok, but how about giving a real choice? Not just a choice between the two most recent MS products, give me true choice and offer up OSX or even better, Linux? What if we ran both 2003 and the new 2007 MS Office Suite?
And that's where I get hung up. Why offer Office 2003? What is the advantage? Yes, I understand that 2007 comes with a slight learning curve, but 2003 is dead software. You might say the same about the MS OSs, but even MS is acknowledging that Vista is not a replacement for XP. So why offer software that is being phased out? Is reinforcing the use of a soon to be dead piece of software beneficial for a student who will soon have to go out and use the newer version? I have my doubts about the need to be so compatible with your service population that you're providing outdated software to placate them. It's hard to encourage the change involved with software and hardware updates, but wouldn't that be pretty high on the usability list for a library?
Now I know that sounds pretty assy of me, and I accept that. I'm just confused by that proposition in particular. Like I said, I agree with the overall point of the post, and even with many of the specifics, I'm just a little soft in my head at times... I encourage you to check out some of the other posts on Tame The Web, the blog about New Jalisco Library is insanely cool, makes me jealous especially when I'm sitting in my box of a library, and the site owner, Michael Stephens is a frickin' brilliant mind, that makes me jealous sitting here in my half-penny brain. So I swear, this isn't a rant. It's me, blogging, like an opinionated blogger. I mean the best.
