Geraldine and Medlibbers,

I guess it depends where you are and what your situation is.  This facility
is a teaching hospital  (~200 beds, >100 residents/med. students).  The
library is the only location where there are publicly available pc's with
office productivity,  educational, research, clinical and internet
capabilities.

Our users use word processing to create patient lists, write pearl books,
prepare class presentations.   They use our inhouse MEDLINE for searching,
CD-ROM packages for education, the internet/www for pubmed, IGM, free
email, FREIDA from the AMA, sports news and whatever else they can think of.

I want as many resources available here in the library as possible so that
when they encounter a problem there is (usually) someone here to answer
questions and give pointers.  We even do one on one training.

We don't have a separate 'lab' for the mundane uses of the computer.  And
if it is ever to be fully integrated into their lives,  it seems to me all
applications need to be available from all computers (with the appropriate
security measures) that our users have access to.

And yes, sometimes, I have problems with too many people and not enough
workstations for people who really want to work.  But I used to have the
problem that there weren't enough chairs in the library to sit in for
people who really wanted to use the library and not just read the paper.

Eileen Stanley
Earl K. Long Medical Center
Baton Rouge, LA
[log in to unmask] ekl.lsumc.edu