It’s not quite that bad–I’ve done other things while I prepped my new equipment and upgraded my 2-year-old Dell in order to hand it down to Tom, one of the stringers at LII. Plus, it’s rather meditative work to watch the status bars change color and press Enter now and then.
This kind of computer grunt work is worth doing once in a while–just often enough to serve as a reminder that stinting on library equipment is usually a false economy.
In a lil’ peanut organization such as LII, we can be forgiven the artisan approach to hardware, where equipment purchases are made one by one, and older equipment is upgraded on an as-needed basis. And most libraries “get it.” But occasionally–less often than in olden tymes, but it still happens, and bad budgets can make this more tempting–some library will take it into its head to “save money” by overextending the life cycle of computers, purchasing junk, or getting by on far less equipment than the staff need to get the job done. It all comes home to roost, though. Pay me now, or pay me later.
You’ll have to excuse me again–I have to go hit the Enter key. You have been warned…
Posted on this day, other years:
- Gulp - 2007
- Dude, what's the ROI? - 2006
- Google's New Library Newsletter Yields some Secret Sauce - 2005
- Blogging and Ethics, Part 4: Don't Stand So Close To Me - 2004
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