HIT: CD towers vs. web access

["Carol Ann K. Winkler" <winklers@INLINK.COM>]

        When I asked a question three weeks ago about CD-ROM tower drive servers
having lesser importance with the arrival of widespread access to the web, I
received only a few answers which I am posting here.  Perhaps now that more
people are returning to work in their school libraries, more people will
answer.  Meanwhile, these are the responses I have received so far.  The
original letter is at the end.

Carol Ann, Will you post a HIT with your answers. This is really an
important question.    Thanks, Della

Della Matthis                      +    Information when NEEDED;
School Library/Media Coordinator   +
Alaska State Library               +    Advice when ASKED FOR;
344 W. Third Ave., #125            +
Anchorage, AK  99501               +    Help when POSSIBLE!
(907)269-6568 Fax(907)269-6580
dellam@muskox.alaska.edu
_______

In a previous article, winklers@INLINK.COM ("Carol Ann K. Winkler") says:

>Does increased network-wide access to the Internet via an ISDN line lower
>the priority of CD-ROMS served by a tower?
>
>The circumstances:
>      My high school is a small, private one for girls--560 students.  The
>annual operating budget for the library is also small.

I do not have any facts to base the following on.  However your CD ROMs will
have materials that you may not find out on the www.  Encyclopedia are only
available by subscription on the www and may be less expensive on CD, you
will need to compare.

The www is good for current information, but that information must be
evaluated as to accuracy.

So I guess the bottom line is, what is available via www and how much
overlap is there with your CD Roms.

helen

--
Helen Sternheim                    voice 413-545-1908, fax 413-545-4884
Director of User Services UMassK12          http://k12.oit.umass.edu
SysOp UmassK12   helen@k12.oit.umass.edu    http://k12s.phast.umass.edu

_____

Carol Ann,
        I think it does.  I have delayed getting a tower on the network
because we have been part of a special project from Pacific Bell and had a
128k frame relay line dropped in last year.  I thought, and rightly so,
that we would have our hands full, just learning and exploring the
possibilities of the Internet.  There are just so many hours in the day and
one cannot do everything.  Also, I have found that there are very few
networkable CD-ROMs that are useful for our particular configuration -
Novell to Macs. They are very expensive, and I want to make sure they will
be used enough to justify the cost.   We still have stand-alone CD-ROMs
available.
        Hope this helps.

Jane Snibbe, Librarian
Marshall School, Seaside, CA

______

Carol - our district has a cd-rom tower at each site but future networked
cds will likely be loaded
on the hard-drives of the file servers.  With memory getting cheaper, our
vendor is telling us this
is the way to go - it's faster as well.  Good luck.

____

Original posting:

Does increased network-wide access to the Internet via an ISDN line lower
the priority of CD-ROMS served by a tower?

The circumstances:
      My high school is a small, private one for girls--560 students.  The
annual operating budget for the library is also small.
      Thanks to a major fundraising campaign my high school library is being
completely renovated this summer.  The original plan called for putting a
networkable modem with four phone lines.  This would have made the World
Wide Web accessible to any computer in the library or in the neighboring
computer lab, only four users at a time.  Now the plan has been changed to
put in an ISDN line with a router for a greater number of simultaneous
users.  I think it is great but  I am rethinking the original plan to put in
a seven-tower drive.  We  need two slots for the only CD-ROM service we have
that has a network license (the magazine index.)   Every computer station
has its own CD-ROM drive and so it has been effective to check out CDs
through the library    A four tower drive will serve, and a second one could
be added later, should it be needed.  (One 7 tower costs more than 2
four-drive towers!) It will be very hard, if not impossible,  for this
school to meet the annual expense needed to support other network CD-ROM
sources, such as biographical and literary indexes.
     Please, those of you that have both  CD towers and widespread access to
the World Wide Web, how are they used?  Given the constrictions of annual
budget, which takes precedence?






Carol Ann K. Winkler
St. Louis, Mo.
winklers@inlink.com