Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen an increasing number of patrons coming into the library because their home computers aren’t working. Lots more PIN requests for old cards, expired cards, and new registrations. It occured to me when a friend asked about a slow computer that there might be something going around. Is it due to legacy issues, old OS software, lack of updates, viruses, spyware or adware gone unchecked? I can’t be sure, but patrons seem genually very appreciate and willing to put up with a lot when they don’t have the internet or their home computers. The largest stumbling blocks seem to be lack of USB flash drive support (lost files) and problems accessing home email through the web. For example, locally there are a number of SBCglobal.net customers who actually get their dial-up or DSL through Yahoo. Since their email domains are …@sbcglobal.net they assume that’s how they get their webmail. www.sbcglobal.net sends you to prodigy and usernames and passwords don’t work there. Go to Yahoo and your in.
I’m certain I’ll be hosting a program on simple general computer security in this fall, but every library needs to be hosting classes on the basics.