Friday, July 19, 2002

Wireless Library Use

The July 15th issue of netConnect has several articles on wireless networks and libraries. The UW library system has a number of wireless access areas, which I find doubly convenient. I often stop through a library to get a connection to check my email and post whatever I've written in the last few hours to our internal document server, and since I'm in the library it's convenient to take a few minutes and get whatever book I've been thinking about reading next.

UW also has a pool of laptops that can be checked out for use within the library. I'm not sure how people are using this; if I were a student I imagine I'd do my catalog searches on the laptop and then walk to get the books with the searches still showing in my browser, but I don't know if this is what people really do. I've tried looking to see what others do, but Memorial Library is huge, and I haven't spotted the laptop users. Perhaps they're all in study cubicles.