The Texas Tech University Library spent approximately $142,000 to increase the wireless Internet capabilities and coverage inside the building this past summer.
The increased capacity comes at a good time, said Justin Daniel, director of Library Technology and Management Services Staff Operations at the library. More and more students and members of the Tech community are opting to use portable devices in the library.
"We still have a very high utilization rate of our public workstations, but we have seen a lot of students bringing in laptops, PDA's and other portable devices with Wi-Fi capabilities," Daniel said. "Last year, for the first time ever, laptop sales exceeded desktop sales. We figured it would be money well spent to expand our wireless services."
Daniel said the library increased its wireless access points, or routers, from nine Wireless B routers to 100 faster Cisco Systems Wireless G routers. The new routers are capable of working with earlier model Wi-Fi systems that use "Wireless A" and "Wireless B" protocols.
The routers are located in the ceilings of every level in the library and concentrated in areas where students tend to do their work. The routers' wireless signals overlap each other to ensure there are no spots in the library where patrons and employees can not obtain a Wi-Fi signal.
Daniel said each router is capable of handling approximately 30 Wi-Fi ready devices and are distributed to provide adequate coverage throughout the library.
"There were many locations within the library that had no wireless access at all," Daniel said. "The reason we expanded to 100 access points was to get total wireless saturation of the building so someone with a portable device could access the wireless Internet anywhere in the library from the basement to the stacks."
Daniel said although the wireless access points are supposed to cover the entire building, most of the wireless routers were placed in areas where students would be located as opposed to library staff members. Staff members have access to the wireless network but will have a weaker signal in their offices than students will have in study areas because staff members have desktop computers with wired connections to the Internet.
Students can access the wireless network by selecting the wireless network TTUnet on their portable, Wi-Fi ready device using their eRaider user name and password, he said.
Daniel said library visitors who are not Tech students or faculty can access the wireless network by creating a guest account.
The University Library is undertaking the "Forget what you think you know. Rediscover the Library" awareness campaign during this 2008-09 school year to increase awareness of the library's services, including increased wireless capacity.
"It's our way of letting the public know this isn't a stereotypical library," said Kaley Daniel, the assistant director communications and development at the University Library. "Our library is much more technologically savvy than most colleges. You can check out DVDs here, have mass study-group sessions anywhere in the library. There's higher end software that may not be in a student's budget, but we have it on our machines and we're open later than any other building on campus."
In addition to the increased wireless network capacity, Justin Daniel said, the library plans to add Liquid Crystal Display televisions for digital signage inform students of library programs and activities via a grant for digital signage, install six new scanning machines, replace all printers and put a printer at the end of each row of public desktop computers.
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