The fourth terminal is available for half-hour sessions only. The staff feels that this shortened time period will give more patrons access to the Internet as a reference tool. Sign up is available at the Reference desk. An individual may only use the Internet for one session a day even if a terminal is free. The staff wants some of the workstations to be available in order to entice patrons to try them.
Patrons can sign up one day in advance.
The workstations were positioned in the middle of the reference area, near the reference desk. The central placement of the workstations might dissuade people from looking at potentially offensive graphics. Based on this code, staff would not allow a patron to walk around the library holding a Playboy centerfold picture for all to see. Staff believed that a patron drawing attention to similar images on a computer screen in the middle of the library would likewise be disruptive and that a patron could be warned that his or her behavior was not acceptable under the library guidelines. So far, in the five months of operation of the Internet workstations, librarians have asked seven patrons to stop displaying potentially offensive graphics.