Getting our Ducks in a Row

You provide the computers, patrons use the computers. What else do you need to know....?
the best defense is a good offense!
DOCUMENTATION -- where is it?
INTERNET POLICY -- where is it?
PASSWORDS -- where are they?
WHAT DOES NORMAL LOOK LIKE HERE?
FOUR THINGS: 1) setting expectations 2) communicating the current state of affairs 3) hopefully fixing whatever's immediately broken 4) working to fix the meta problem in the future
tell bill of rights anecdote, health insurance

Who are we dealing with?

Sometimes it helps to model "types" of patrons

each of these types of patrons has to be dealt with differently and causes different problems for the librarian/library staff. You may have some, or none of these patrons in your library but your technology planning should acknowledge their existence. Remember for people with little computer experience, your computer may be the only one they know how to use, they may be coming to the library because other people got tired of helping them

[the basic troubleshoot is to replace each cable one at a time with known working cables until you've isolated the problem, if you can. Do you know who to call if there is a problem outside your immediate area, upstream provider? ISP?]

Breaking it Down: PEBKAC

Technostress & Emotional Computer Relationship Troubles ---------> [is the patron having an anger, fear or confusion-based response to the problem? do you need to deal with that first?]

Standard failure modes [is the window off the screen? did they click in another window? did a pop-up obscure their window? do they have more than one window open? did they move the start bar someplace crazy?]

Troubleshooting

Reality testing "Is this a thing I think a computer can do?" "Is this a thing I think our computers can do?"

JGI, seriously. [this is where that error message comes in handy]

Where do preferences hide? [Internet: control panel, and network, in addition to being in IE. Word: tools > options/customize. What else is in the control panel? printers, users, network, system (drivers), display (desktop images), add/remove programs, date/time]

Specifics: The Web

[NO: "the computer has issues"]

"My Yahoo is broken." [with a car it's spark, gas, air. with the web it's cables, literal network, virutal network, your computer, their computer. know how to debug an email address and a web address and a link: NO SPACES, no funny characters except the @, the little squiggle is a tilde, standard endings for URLs and email]

"Where's my web page?" [look for error codes: 404, 401, &c., look for common URL spellings and know how your browser deals with them (IE may search from the address bar, for example), look for capitalization, look for broken links if someone's clicking through from an email]

"What am I supposed to do here?" [example from immigration page. remember that new users read every web page all the way through, try to teach them to look for action buttons or links. you are not repsonsible for all the bad web design in the world.]

Reality testing: "My bank needs me to enter my social security number...." "I want to sell this on Ebay in 45 minutes."[How to mouseover a link to see where it really goes. What is phishing]

Specifics: Uploading/Downloading

"Nothing happened" [popup blocker, do you even allow downloading? is there a hidden "save as" window someplace]

"Where is my file?" [well what's it called? where did you put it? set default downloads location that isn't the INTERNET cache. sometimes you can look on the Documents menu. Search by time when all else fails]

"My attachment won't attach" [attaching takes time and usually one too many steps, sometimes you need to know the letter of the drive if you're using a firewallish thinglike deep freeze, yes you have to click "open" to attach something, no it makes no sense.]

"This attachment is like a brick on my desktop!" [explain the "must have appplication" aspects to attachments]

Specifics: MS Word

"It says go to file print but there IS NO FILE PRINT." [menu hiding? disable that entirely if you can, make sure they understand three step menus. the printbutton does NOT do what the print command does]

"Make that paper clip go away forever." [the office assistant can be hid one time, per session, generally, or removed entirely from your word install]

Specifics: Printers

"I want to print just what I'm looking at." [make sure they get that a web page is just one big long pagecheck to see if you have a print selection option]

"My document doesn't fit on the page." [see if there is a "print this page" option, there should be a way to scale pages when printing, usually by percentages or just "fit on page" sometimes you can span multiple pages, sometimes this just won't work]

"I can't afford all these pages." [2-up! hard to read but saves paper]

« credits »

Jessamyn West is the editor of the weblog librarian.net and the co-editor of Revolting Librarians Redux. She used to do phone and email tech support at Speakeasy Networks She works as a community technology mentor with people and libraries in Central Vermont. IM her at iamthebestartist.

This presentation was created in HTML using CSS. There was no PowerPoint involved in this presentation except as a nagging bad example. The layout and stylesheet are available to borrow via a share and share alike creative commons license. See source code for details. Thanks to Darren for the background image.