Okay, I'm up on my soapbox now. Much of the technology at JPL is so incredibly, woefully behind the curve that it's embarrassing. Thank you, City of Jacksonville. Our computers are way out of date and don't have anywhere near enough memory, processing power, updated plugins, anything. I know it's extremely expensive to keep public PCs up to date but when the computers freeze up CONSTANTLY (which happens at Pablo Creek all the time and I understand at other JPL libraries as well) then something obviously needs to be done.
Wouldn't it be nice if we had our own independent source of technology funding and didn't have to rely on the City for any of it? I know that's unrealistic but I'm just dreaming...
Don't mind me, just venting.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Technology at JPL
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2 comments:
Carol,
I agree with you 1000%...as you know from past experience.
Now that I'm in charge of Remote Customer Services, it's a constant frustration that we offer downloadable items, wi-fi and other online services, yet we have no real-time tech support to which customers can go.
Waaaah!
Mike
My job is tied to technology. Things have drastically improved over the years for my piece of the library services pie- at least as far as the customers are concerned. We used to tell customer that it would take about a month to get a book through ILL, but now I'm seeing things get here within a week, two weeks if we have to request it again.
But technology can also be a barrier to getting the job done. One constant barrier is the speed (actually, the lack of speed) of the Internet. The slowdown's not as bad for us as it once was but a few years ago we asked Admin for permission to come in earlier so we could complete the bulk of our work done by 11:00 AM. That's the time response time would slow down to a pace only a Comcast turtle would love and I would count 20-30 seconds between screen changes or clicks. Since it takes 6-7 clicks to process a book for shipment, it was taking over an hour to process 20 books to the point that we could physicially pack them. It took longer to process borrowed books for our customers. We now come in at 7:00 AM to compensate for the slowdown.
It's easy to blame the the awakening of and work starts of West Coast for the slowdown (11 AM our time = 8 AM on the West Coast), but I strongly suspect that there's gotta be something wrong with the infrastructure that's supposed to support the Internet. I think it may be a combination of outdated equipment as Carol says and an overtaxed infrastructure.
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