Public Workstations For Spring 2006
In response to staff and student requests, a number of changes have been made to the public workstations for the Spring 2006 semester. These changes will begin rolling out on Jan. 31, 2006, as student workstudies from the Library IT Services (LITS) department start rebuilding public workstations.
The changes are:
- All changes made to a public workstation, and any documents saved to it, will be wiped out when the workstation is rebooted. Last semester, some students inadvertently saved personal information to a public workstation and were later upset that someone else might have viewed it. Staff members have also requested that documents saved to the public workstations get wiped out on a regular basis. This new change will better protect students’ privacy and wipe out any viruses and spyware that get accidentally installed on the public workstations.
- The public workstations have been re-configured to allow access to USB thumbnail drives. This does not guarantee that all thumbnail drives will work on the public workstation, since some require special drivers or configurations, but a wider variety of thumbnail drives should work on the public workstations. When connected, these drives will be assigned a drive letter of D:\. Before the student removes the drive, they should click the USB icon in the system tray (lower right-hand corner of the desktop) and select “Safely Remove Hardware.”
- SciFinder Scholar has been updated to the 2006 version.
- Adobe Reader, Flash, Java, and Quicktime have all been updated to the latest versions.
- Microsoft patches will now be delivered to the public workstations using a central patching server, so we can track whether any public workstations are missing patches.
- The background on the desktop has been modified to include text that warns the students/patrons that any changes made to the PC will be wiped out on reboot.
