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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