Library lab setup

[eberne <eberne@TIAC.NET>]

Dear Friends,

     I am hoping you can help with some advice. We are in an urban location
and are *very* pressed for space. But the school has decided on a minimal
library expansion.
    We have five public stations now, and there are times that students
stand in line to get to an OPAC, especially after we have taught a class.
    I would like to have the equivalent of a lab right in the library, so
that a whole class can sit down and work at the stations, either on the
Internet, or the OPAC or other library database. But we have such limited
space that this group of computers will take up most of the room on the
ground floor, and we won't have room for additional stations for people who
just drop in, and aren't associated with a class.

    The first question is this: if we put this lab right in the library,
will students and faculty who drop in to use electronic library resources
feel comfortable sitting down at a station that is part of a "lab" setup?

    The second question is this: shall we have an instructor station with
projection, or an instructor station which can take control of the screens
of individual stations, so that students in a class in the lab watch their
own screens rather than a projected image on the wall?
    I am very excited about this project, and don't want to make a serious
mistake! Please help!


Ellen Berne
Library Director, The Winsor School  Pilgrim Road  Boston MA 02215
(617)735-9510
Co-Manager, ISED-L
Instructor, Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science
eberne@tiac.net