My week with the Pepper Pad is over, and the UPS van just drove off with it, but I’ve still got a lot to report.
My testing ran into problems when it turned out that the WiFi network in the library was on the fritz. I did some netstumbling today and found that only two APs were broadcasting at anything close to full-power and all the others were whispering like they were gonna get shushed by an old-time librarian. In short, at some point in the past few weeks, though I’ve been too busy and ignorant to notice, the WiFi in the building followed the freshmen to the nearest kegger and didn’t come back.
But, using the two working APs as guideposts, I found WiFi range to be good enough that I’m pretty sure if the other APs were working, we’d have complete coverage. That doesn’t mean, however, that I got to do all the testing that I wanted, and what I’m least happy about is not having a chance to put it in the hands of some students and see how they used it.
I get the feeling that it wouldn’t take long for the students to discover the streaming net radio and instant messaging, but all of that is gravy on top of the way I imagine it could ease and improve access to the 300,000 print volumes we have in our collection.
But all of that is speculation, and I’ve got real findings to report…later.