Less leisure, more research

Many a time I have walked into the Portland State library after class to write a paper or print something out, only to find a line of five or more people waiting to use the same computers.

Here’s the problem: I would bet dollars to doughnuts that a good percentage of the students already on those computers are busy chatting on Facebook, watching episodes of The Office on YouTube, or playing card games on Pogo.

Now don’t get me wrong, these are all fine enterprises in and of themselves and I also indulge in such activities on a regular basis. But school research computers are far from the best venue for these leisure activities.

I understand that many of us have free time between classes that needs to be filled, but does it really seem fair that people trying to finish or print a paper before their next class are forced to wait for someone checking out their friends’ newly uploaded photos?

Part of the problem is that there just are not enough computers to go around. There are 54 computers requiring an ODIN account on the second floor of the library. These computers are run by the library itself and are research priority computers. This means that if the lab is full and you see someone watching videos instead of working, you are free to tattle on them to the nearest employee and have them removed from the station. Not an appealing prospect for most people, I would imagine.

The second-floor computer lab doesn’t even have a queue, turning it from first come, first serve, into a game of luck, where whoever runs faster gets the computer.

The library does offer 44 Kiosk computers that don’t require an ODIN account and won’t let users access any of the aforementioned leisure sites. These computers are used mainly for research but are still lacking in a couple very important ways.

On these computers one can only access library databases and .edu, .gov, or .mil Web sites. Also, without an ODIN account, you cannot print from these Kiosks.

It’s about time the labs started making good on their “research use has the highest priority on these machines” claim. It would not be difficult to simply block Web sites like YouTube and Facebook from these so-called research priority computers. In fact, it is my position that the majority of computers on campus should block these, and similar, leisure Web sites.

I would like to think that PSU is an institute of higher learning for which one does not require access to social networking sites; especially in computer labs made to give students free access to the resources that allow them to do school work.

There should still be leisure computers, but they, instead of research computers, should be the minority. How much shorter would the lines get if YouTube was no longer an option?

The Office of Information Technology is in charge of all the first floor computers at the library, and at the Neuberger and Broadway labs. None of these computers are research priority. This becomes especially problematic nearing finals week when all the labs are constantly at full capacity.

Imagine turning the roughly 70 computers in the Neuberger Hall computer lab into research only computers. This would not only free up computers for other work related projects, but also for those who simply need to print out a paper before their next class.

Access to information is a right. Access to Facebook, unfortunately, is merely a privilege.

You can visit www.oit.pdx.edu/irs/tl/services.phtml for a listing of available labs including their hours of operation and a nifty, if not always correct, chart of current lab capacities. This site can be accessed from any of the library Kiosks.

And remember, Facebook is fun, but using school resources for relevant research is always preferred.