LITA Nashville -- Concurrent Session 6

Thin Clients: The Spin on Thin
Helene E. Gold, Eckerd College

This was a fun presentation that I went to mostly because I had a good time hanging out with Helene earlier in the conference. I don't anticipate that we'll be seeing thin clients anytime soon in our library, but one of the points Helene made was that generally librarians are told that this is going to happen, not brought into the decision-making process. It was nice to hear the experience of someone who was distressed, at first, but was able to ultimately see the advantages.

Thin clients are what those of us who are old enough to remember the pre-PC days would call dumb terminals. The public side is a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. The computing side is a shared server on a computer in a secure location. Modern thin clients support USB flash drives so a user can access his or her own material.

The primary advantage to a thin client system is cost. There is a high initial cost, but a savings in the long run. More than equipment cost, there is a substantial savings in maintenance cost, particular the labor. With fewer moving parts and a lot fewer holes for students to try sticking food into, the thin clients are very robust, making them ideal for recreational and dining areas. There is also a nice bonus in savings on energy usage and costs--thin clients use about one-sixth the power of a PC.

It was something of a comfort to realize that Eckerd College is teaching their students one at a time about the system, just as we are about printing. It seems like there ought to be a better way, but just because we put out signs and put up websites, doesn't mean that anyone is going to read them. And why should they? They don't need to know until they encounter a problem, so it's a good thing that I get paid to solve problems.

Helene has a nice site up with links to her handouts and her slides. An advantage of actually being there is that I got to see the fun video clips.

Labels: conferences

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