The General Access Lab Manager Top Ten

By Dr. Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner, Student Computing Services Manager

Since subscribing to Benchmarks, I've found that one of my favorite features is the "List of the Month" which showcases an often wacky but always intriguing usenet group or listserv currently available on the Web. (Of course my absolute favorite Benchmarks feature is always the article that my boss writes.....)

We General Access Lab managers also have a listserv which we use to exchange questions and ideas and to generally keep abreast of what is happening in "UNT Lab-land." After reviewing these missives carefully saved in my GroupWise archives and after polling my managerial colleagues, I find that I owe it to Lab-landers everywhere to share some of our worst service nightmares and frustrations. By this I hope to help create an even more effective, pleasant, and learning-conducive General Access Lab environment than the fine one we already have in place at UNT.

Borrowing a page from David Letterman's book (do you remember when he used to be funny?), I am compiling these in a Top Ten List of Things That Really Make GAL Managers See Red. These are not necessarily in any particular order as every lab manager has his or her own personal pet peeves and boiling point.

Top Ten List of Things That Really Make GAL Managers See Red

10. AOL Instant Messenger. This annoying fellow pops up everywhere on every lab machine possible despite all warnings that "People downloading software will have their GAL privileges revoked". There must be nothing more fun and diverting in this world than digitally chatting with all of your AOL buddies while you are supposed to be writing your term paper (I wouldn't know - I have no friends). However, the GAL machines do not belong to you and therefore downloading software to them is simply NOT AN OPTION!

Several patrons have asked, "Why not just put Messenger on the machines and then we wouldn't have to download it all of the time?" The University of North Texas does not support chat in its labs; the General Access Labs were designed for research and study. If you want to chat, save up and buy your own machine. After all, you don't throw parties in the library do you?

9. Yahoo Messenger. See AOL Instant Messenger above. Let me add - these messenger applications actually slow down and degrade the performance of a computer. They extend the length of the boot up sequence and deposit so many extra files and registry entries that they actually take up a fair amount of drive space. This is why lab managers don't want them on the machines. By the way, Yahoo just posted its highest quarterly earnings ever. After seeing how many instances of Yahoo Messenger are appearing on our machines, I am not surprised!

8. Anybody who surreptitiously downloads software onto lab machines. Just like the poor slobs who open every E-mail attachment they get and then cry when a virus ruins their files, Web downloaders face the same danger of viruses and general software and hardware failure. All applications on UNT lab computers have been carefully tested by the computing staff to make sure they offer optimal advantages without seriously damaging performance before they are OK'd for use on public machines. The University simply cannot risk the compromising of its entire network operations for the sake of small bit of free software. Recent stories about E-mail attachment viruses prove that even the most innocuous file can do a great deal of damage.

This does not mean that there isn't a lot of useful software on the Web. If you find an application that you think would benefit the UNT General Access Lab community, please let your lab manager know. Recently, I was alerted to the fact that several free applications are available for allowing the viewing, translating, editing, and sending of E-mail, documents, and Websites in Japanese, Chinese, Korean etc. Our ACS lab patrons had been sneakily downloading these apps. I tested the software, found that it was really useful and stable and ultimately made it part of our standard machine image, much to the joy of my lab customers.

7. Let's get off of this software stuff..... Folks who come in to the lab with a virus-infected diskette. Of course, they probably brought the virus from another General Access Lab machine that became infected when someone downloaded some rogue software from a Website somewhere...... OK, I really WILL stop now!

6. Folks having really loud conversations with each other in the lab. If you want good conversation, take a break and go to Cool Beans. (yes, I DO understand that if you were allowed to chat digitally via AOL Instant Messenger that you would have no need to converse loudly in the lab..... but this is MY article. You can advance your viewpoint in your article.)

5. Folks not saving their work regularly and then getting mad at the lab staff when their machine freezes and crashes and they lose all their work. The General Access Labs are public labs. With so many users on the machines, occasionally the poor computers do give up the ghost and Murphy's Law says that this will occur at around page 19 of your unsaved 20-page term paper that is due in a half hour. Save your work early and often. All the lab staff can do is offer sympathy....

4. Folks creating printer logjams by clogging up the queue. A patron tries to print a document and it won't print for some reason. Rather than asking his friendly lab staff about the problem, the patron sends the document to print again. It still doesn't print so he sends it again..... All this does is jam the print queue (the "line" in which all documents wait to be printed on a specified machine) and make matters worse for everyone. By the way, these are the same people who punch the elevator button several times thinking that it will make the car come faster.

3. Playing games. Now this one really isn't too bad during those dog days of summer, but you will be loved by no one during October midterms when a long line of term paper customers are waiting while you play Yahoo Checkers.

2. Folks who print out 20-plus page Websites. I already wrote a brilliant article about this two issues ago.

1. And the Number One Thing That Really Makes Lab Managers See RED is: People who say, "This lab really sucks and nothing ever works" when ONE machine is out of order!

Other than that, we love you all. Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Author bio: Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner spends her time plotting how to most creatively kill the AOL Instant Messenger Man when she is not busy managing the Academic Computing Services General Access Lab.