(testing out Branch for library discussions and I thought this was a good post to start with)

What's your take on computer labs in libraries?

Personally I see the teens that use my library having more access to their own technology with every school year that passes. Whether it be from laptops they borrow from school or their own iPod touches, they're more connected than ever. When I started at my library in 2010, we had trouble with people stealing each others library cards to get extra time on the computer. That problem no longer exists.

What do we fill our computer labs with? Gaming centers? Creative spaces?

Nice! I've been looking forward to using Branch for a while now!

In what I think is a weird stat, our computer use is going up. More logins per day, more per semester, and the laptops that we circulate are ALWAYS out. They are our highest circulating item!

I can totally see that turning at some point in the next 3-5 years, though. But for right now, we can't throw enough desktops at people.

I think that if our library circulated laptops our stats would be higher. Our teens get laptops through the school but they have to return them in the summer.

We are currently pretty much saturated with usage, but we are anticipating making changes ahead of declining use. Currently we have 258 Mac Minis deployed with a patron choice of OSX or Windows, and 75 Windows laptops for checkout within the building.

Next year I'm due for a technology refresh and I'm working with public service staff to design our next generation of services. We're considering virtual desktops that are tied to a little bit of persistent storage for each user (maybe 5GB) accessible within our buildings with a desktop, laptop, or tablet-- and accessible via the web as well. It would include an "App store" that patrons could choose to check out Photoshop, etc. if they needed and we hadn't reached our max on licenses.

For hardware, we're considering moving away from desktops in rows and diversifying even more (some desktops, some more laptops, and adding some tablets).

Our lab space is becoming more centered on content creation, with more mobile furniture for collaboration.

Enjoying the discussion (and being able to test branch) I don't work in a library, so don't have personal experience to share. But when I think of the future of these spaces, I think of a teen area in an urban library that I visited recently. Some library provided computers, but mostly lots of spaces with different types of furniture that could be moved around. Kids were there with their own devices, some were using library gaming equipment, some studying. It was such a fun collaborative space. If I can find my photos from that visit, I'll post them.

Our local public library has pretty heavy usage of the computers. It's a small library and we have quite a few people from lower income areas that use the lab since they don't have a computer or Internet access at home. This also means no computers from the schools for kids (although they too have computer labs). For those reasons though, it does really function in that traditional check in, limited time, wait computer lab. In situations like this, I think it is really important to have simple old school computer labs available for those people that don't do much more than word processing and email. I would love to see the addition of a space where content creation could take place.

And thanks for including me, I saw the post you put up about Branch and had it on my list to check out. It seems like a really interesting new way of communicating.

Coming back to comment on Matt's post: It's totally true that we are thinking about the future, especially since we're in the middle of building a brand new academic library building. We insisted that the area that will have desktops when we open (12-14 months from now) is all access flooring, and the furniture is all modular. It will be trivial to change to a more mobile setup, remove desktops to make room for laptops or tablets, etc. I totally expect that 3 years from now it will look very different than when we open next year.

If anyone is interested, our Building project is pretty much completely documented on our wiki: wiki.lib.utc.edu

We have declining use of public PCs -- over 50% now sit vacant. But we have steeply rising use of wireless within the building. Number one site: youtube.

@Michael: Yah, we see that a lot too in my public library. Many of our heavy users are lower income and transient populations. There are also quite a few that just use us for printing only. We're 10 cents per page and I guess that's the best deal in town. (BTW: teens HARDLY ever print at my library. I wonder if this is a generational thing?)

@Jason: I love the wiki. I'm on vacation so I didn't get to look at it very in depth but I am making sure I do when I get back to Maine.

@James: YouTube and Facebook for my teens. YouTube is their default music player and movie viewer. I really don't think the teens own any music or movies! But really, do they need to?

I think we will see libraries become more of a doing space than a quiet space. I am currently trying to organise a 3d printer for my school library together with some iPads I'm hoping students will start making their own products / businesses. Hopefully it will become the home for our idea factory.

@Dan: "Idea factory"...I love it.

Have you ever seen things like this happening libraries?

infospace.ischool.syr.edu

blog.makezine.com

justinthelibrarian.com

I would like to see libraries move in to a collaborative "doing space" also @Dan. But what if we could take technology and make the available resources work for us?

We have a collaborative space and we are surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of books that have information that at times can't be quickly accessed online, at least legally, and is sitting on the shelves waiting to be found.

Can we take an iPad, or any other computing device, and tell it what we are working on and have it give us a listing of books in the library that could help, or similar ones?

Can we take technology and libraries and make them work for us instead of us having to do the work of searching and turn them in to collaboration hubs?

We have three main types of computer space at my library: ~ general computing: internet, Photoshop Elements, Office
~ the Tech Center: Adobe CS 5.5 + general computing. This is a classroom setting so there's a huge instructor screen at the front of the room)
~ the new Digital Media Lab. All of the shiny toys are in the DML (mics, video & audio editing, light kits, digital conversion equipment in a variety of formats, etc.). Scattered throughout the Library are some more general computers.

I'm not 100% positive, but I think the majority of people using the computer labs are from nearby towns who prefer visiting our library. Then I think the people on the other computers are more likely to be townies. This would be because the computer labs are underground so there is no cell reception. Local small business owners need to be able to make phone calls so they're upstairs!

Downstairs, most people are using the labs to check their email, print/fax, or checking Facebook. The teens are all up in Minecraft on the teen computers. Overall, I think computer labs are whatever people need them to be.

I went to high school online, and I've more or less lived in libraries (public and college) for a few years. Right now, I'm at college with an Android phone as my only personal computing device.

Public libraries in my home area (Hennepin County, MN) provided pretty basic workstations with IE, Firefox, Paint, Word, Excel, and a few other apps. I used to be able to bring in a flash drive with U3 or PortableApps.com installed and run my own software. That was a great capability; I was disappointed when they locked that out (though I understood the security rationale).

My biggest annoyance was how outdated the software got. In three or four years, there was only the one update that broke my portable apps. Firefox 3.5 is still there AFAIK.

Of course, the library workstations were old PCs with Windows XP installed, and they were controlled by a number of startup & logoff scripts, as well as PC Reservation. The setup didn't leave much room for letting the machines update themselves, that I could see. They restored from a system image every night, and all executable filetypes were blocked at the system level. Still, running Firefox 3.5 or 3.6 when the current release version is 5, 6, 7, 8 got frustrating. Chrome never made it to those machines while I was still living there, which was disappointing.

One wouldn't expect the ability to run games in a library, but graphics editing seems basic. For a while Paint was the only editor, and there was no video/audio editor available.

The update that broke my portable apps thankfully brought with it GIMP and (IIRC) Audacity, so there were more options for content creation. A few of the machines had scanners, which were annoying to use because of the manufacturer's software but could get the job done.

I can understand that there were few options for content creation beyond documents, though. I rarely, if ever, saw anyone working on anything more than an email or Word document in my glances around on the way in or out.

I've made enough posts in a row for now, so I'll come back later with my college library experiences if they still seem worth sharing.

For now, I'm curious: What might make content creation (beyond text) a more popular pursuit? Training? I'm not sure.

Here in Denmark we have almost ubiquitous internet. I have seen figures around 97% of the population having access to internet and a computer. But there is still a need for computer labs in the public libraries.

Before people needed to access a computer. Not so much anymore. I think we now need it because of all the other things that a library is. It is a place of peace and quiet. It has reference materials. It has a community.

I travel around a lot - and always use the local libraries to work in. Here I can sit in peace, the coffee is cheap and the internet is free and fast. The best of them have different kinds of workspaces - from desks to decliners and sofas - where I can sit with my computer and use the books for reference.

Our computers are still being used all the time. We often have long waits and yes, people are still stealing each other's cards for more time. We are thinking about digital media spaces and what the rising popularity of mobile devices means for our community but I think it will take us longer to get there. We have such a mix of new users and the tech-savvy. Another issue for our community is that most of our teens have many siblings and some live in small homes with multiple families so having a place to go for your own quiet computer time is very important.

It is also possibly not only about hardware - libraries can offer specialist software, giving students a chance to try new products like adobe creative suite etc.

Do we need to move away from traditional librarians and have more techie technicians?

Staff also need to be trained in how to find information online.

Thanks to everyone for contributing. I am going to conclude this conversation (as a test! I've never concluded a conversation on Branch) so we'll all get to see how this works.