[OPLINTECH] [OPLINLIST] Survey on floppies, CD burners, and flash drives for public computers

[Phil Shirley]

I have results for 22 Ohio public libraries, many who e-mailed me and a 
few in our county that I called - thanks very much to everyone for their 
participation.  Below (and attached - same info but better formatting) 
is a summary of the results, followed by everyone's comments (stripped 
of identifying info).

It's not too late if you still want to respond - I'd be grateful for 
more input.  Again, thanks very much to everyone who responded.

Phil

Summary

•	Number of libraries: 22 (public libraries in Ohio)

•	Public computers Have floppy drives:
o	yes	13
o	some	5
o	no	4 (all but one of the "no" libraries has external floppy drives 
available)

•	Sell floppies? price?
o	yes, 25¢:	1
o	yes, 50¢:	7
o	yes, 75¢	1
o	yes, $1	6
o	yes, $1.50	1
o	yes, 50¢ used, $1 new:	1
o	no:	5

•	Public computers Have CD burners
o	yes:	11
o	some:	5
o	no:	6

•	Sell CD-ROM's? price?
o	yes, $1:	9
o	yes, 50¢:	2
o	yes, 50¢ for CD-R, $2 FOR CD-RW
o	yes, $1 for CD-R, $1.50 FOR CD-RW
o	no:	9

•	Patrons can use flash drives:
o	yes:	22

•	Sell flash drives? price?
o	yes, $5:	1
o	yes, $6:	1
o	yes, $7:	1
o	yes, $10:	4
o	yes, $15:	2
o	yes, varies:	1
o	no:	12

•	Capacity of flash drives you sell:
o	512:	1
o	1 GB:	5
o	2 GB:	2
o	varies:	2
o	n/a:	12


Future plans / comments:

Massive amounts of free online storage and increasing popularity of 
online apps like Google Docs makes storage less important.

Plan to add cd writers to all patron pcs

Our new computers are thin clients, each with a USB hub.  We have some 
with ext floppy drives attached, with a few extra drives that can 'float'.
We are trying to transition to USB media as opposed to floppies or even CDs.

Since we only replaced half the public computers at a time, this gave 
patrons plenty of warning & time for the transition.

Flash drives: I buy from Newegg or TigerDirect and pay $6.99-$8.00 each 
(hp, Kingston, DataStick)

We just ordered 7 replacement PCs without floppies, so for a couple 
years we will be in transition - some PCs will still have floppies and 
the new ones will not.

CD Burning is rarely requested and 700MB is a small amount of memory 
when compared to modern flash drives.  We will burn an occasional ISO 
image for a patron though.  When the patron compares speed, size, and 
ease of use...flash drives win hands-down.

Flash drives sold at library: The capacity changes from month to month. 
  We use CDW-G for our vendor who has been good about getting us really 
good deals.  One lot of flash drives ended up being around $4 each for 
512MB.

They can still use the older computers to transfer files, but they are 
strongly discouraged from re-using floppies.  Once they find out the 
size comparison with a floppy and even a small USB drive, they quickly 
see the light.  Floppy disks are slow, small, and unreliable...a dead 
technology.

Every patron machine has a CDR in it.  Next year they will have DVD-R.

Flash drives: Yes, we sell them at the Circ desk, but the service is 
offered by the Friends of the Library.  The Auditor didn't like us 
selling them and wanted to track patrons names, so by having the friends 
do the purchase and receive the money we don't have to worry so much. 
We sell 1gb DataTravelers for $10.  I can't really recommend a great 
vendor because price and capacity change constantly.  Get 3 quotes and 
choose the best. (We used CDWG, GlobalGov, and Florida Micro).

We may sell DVD-R disks next year.

Staff machines will still have floppy drives, but it will be my 
RECOMMENDATION we don't burn disks for anyone.  If someone would like 
something moved to a USB memory stick, that would be a worthwhile time 
investment for them.

I tell every patron I come into contact with (classes, assisting them in 
the lab, or on the occasion I'm covering the Ref Desk) that Floppy disks 
are the oldest piece of technology still being used and it's becoming 
incredibly hard to purchase new computers with Floppy Drives in them.  I 
tell them it's the least dependable storage solution available, explain 
to them how USB sticks work, and most make the transition on their own. 
  If you educate people and do not appear to have an agenda to sell them 
anything, they tend to move on their own.

We were looking at our regional library system in our area to facilitate 
a group purchase for flash drives but I guess there was not enough 
interested to get the per unit rate we were hoping for.

Some of our computers still have internal ZIP disk drives but those are 
slated for replacement in November of this year. We have also kicked 
around the idea of putting in a self service vending unit (similar to 
snacks) in our building to allow the public to purchase what they need. 
The unit would sell and dispense floppies, CD-R and RW's, Flash drives, 
notepads and library branded merchandise.

Flash drives: Our goal is to maintain the low price.  The first batch 
(Sandisk) we bought were 512 MB.  Second batch (Kingston) are 1 GB. I 
have seen good prices at geek.com but do not know where our orders were 
from.  We just buy any brand and do not have our logo on them.

I think the portable USBs would work well for a transition.

Older patrons with older machines at home tend to still use floppies. 
Younger crowd, college students and techies are using the Flash Drives.

We paid a bit extra to have [floppy drives] included in our new 
computers.  Staff computers have not had floppy drives for two years. We 
provide a USB floppy drive at public service desks.

Floppies sold at library? No. We recycle old floppies and "loan" them to 
patrons.

Public computers have CD burners that patrons can use? Yes. New 
computers actually have DVD/RW but no burning software and you can't 
burn DVDs in XP.

CD-ROMS: No. And we don't provide them. We did do a thing in Steady 
State where we had a re-directed My Documents folder but frankly no one 
has burned a CD in the three years we've been offering it.

Sell flash drives? No. Several people have in the past suggested looking 
at flash drives from Tiger, Global or Newegg. Branded flash drives are 
too expensive for the capacity you get IMHO.

Some simple things about external media...make sure you set the bios not 
to boot from floppy or USB or CD. Not to scare anyone but if I can boot 
from my flash drive I'll own your computer and a big chunk of your 
network by just rebooting.  Also, and I don't want anyone to get in a 
twist, but we have been told that if you sell floppies, CDs or whatever 
you have to charge tax and report it etc.

Plans to change: Maybe add DVD Burners

Source for flash drives: M&J Technologies but also CDW-Gov.

We are trying to get patrons to move over as we have not found floppies 
to be that reliable.  They fail a lot.

Yes, but don’t really sell any anymore. Charged 1.50.  Not really 
selling the floppy’s anymore due to low demand.

As of right now if we do upgrade our computers not sure if we would 
offer flash drives.



Phil Shirley wrote:
> We're going to be replacing our public computers (used for Internet and 
> Microsoft Office), and we're also at the point where we're about out of 
> the flash memory drives we sell so we'll need to re-order.  I'd like to 
> get some information about what other libraries in the state are doing 
> with regard to the kind of removable storage that patrons can use and 
> that the library sells.  I have put together a list of 10 questions 
> about this below; I would appreciate any information you could give me, 
> and I'll be glad to compile everyone's answers for the list (please let 
> me know if you don't want me to include your library's name when I do 
> this).  Also, below the questions are my answers and thoughts.
> 
> 1. Library name
> 2. Public computers have floppy drives?
> 3. Floppies sold at library?  Price?
> 
> 4. Public computers have CD burners that patrons can use?
> 5 CD-ROMS sold at library?  Price?
> 
> 6. Patrons can use flash memory drives on public computers?
> 7. Flash drives sold at library? Price and capacity? Can you recommend a 
> good vendor?
> 
> 8. Plans to change any of this?
> 9. If you used to have floppy drives for the public but don't anymore, 
> how did you deal with the transition, especially in terms of patrons who 
> needed to transfer data from their floppies to some other media?
> 10. Any other comments?
> 
> My answers and thoughts: At Cuyahoga Falls Library, patrons can use 
> floppies and flash memory drives at every public Internet/Office 
> computer.  We sell floppies for 50 cents and 512 MB flash drives for 
> $10.  My thinking at the moment is that it might be a good idea to move 
> away from floppies like I've seen other libraries do, and that low price 
> is more important than size in choosing flash drives to sell, in order 
> to make them as accessible as possible.  It looks like Newegg might be 
> the best place to get inexpensive flash drives; I also looked at large 
> quantities imprinted with the library logo, and at quantities of 300+, 
> for smaller drives (512 MB), you can get prices less than $8 each. 
> Memory prices seem volatile, so the size and price of the flash drives 
> you sell might depend on what you could find when you bought them.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Phil

-- 

Phil Shirley
Technology Services Coordinator
Cuyahoga Falls Library
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
330-928-2117, ext. 109
pshirley at CuyahogaFallsLibrary dot org

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