COLLIER CITIZEN

Looking at our Libraries: All 10 Collier County branches receive new computers, software

Carla Grieve, Citizen Contributor
View Comments

Every industry, business and government entity on the planet is challenged with the daunting task of keeping pace with technology. The Collier County Public Library system is no exception.

In recent months, the public-use and staff computers at nine locations have been replaced. The finishing touches are being done at the Everglades City branch, completing all 10 locations.

So far, the three big ones — Headquarters, Naples Regional and South Regional — plus Golden Gate have had all their public-use computers replaced. At the five smaller remaining branches (East Naples, Golden Gate Estates, Immokalee, Marco Island and Vanderbilt Beach), both public and staff computers are all new. The branches have new monitors as well. The Florida Department of State, Division of Library and Information Services donated new mouse pads. The migration project started in October 2015 and is just about complete.

The main motivation behind this hardware and software migration to the Collier County's Information Technology network was improved customer service. Not only is the computer hardware consistent across the network but improvements were made to the software as well. All public-use computers have been updated to Windows 10 and have Microsoft Office Suite. This is especially important to anyone looking for career assistance or working on a resume at the library.

Our library staff has the technical expertise to assist customers and support the new computer hardware and software. In addition, seven of our libraries have a LEAP (Library Electronic Assistance Program) high school student on site to provide more one-on-one help with your electronic device needs. You'll recall that the Friends of the Library funded LEAP. Go to www.collier-friends.org for the locations and the phone number at each to call to make an appointment for this assistance; LEAP is under 'Other Services.'

While there, you can review other Friends of the Library (FOL) information on their newly, redesigned website, including the just posted Nick Linn Lecture Series luncheon dates for 2017. OK, I'll give them to you right now: Jan. 9, Feb. 3, March 3 and March 10. Folks have started to buy tickets, even though the authors are still to be announced.

Getting back to public-use computers at the library branches, plans are in the works to update the outdated equipment in the Youth and Children's departments. With funding assistance from FOL, the library system is piloting the creation of Innovation Labs for children (more about this later in the year). FOL has purchased nine iPads along with educational apps to assist students in literacy and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skill development. After all, today's students are preparing to compete for jobs among a large global workforce.

Where else in Collier County are there public-use computers? In schools? But those are most likely restricted to the students and school staff. Our libraries provide us, their patrons and customers, with on-site use of hardware and software to access the internet. More importantly, we all, from wherever, can get to the vast online resources at www.collierlibrary.org. It's Collier County's digital library that's open 24/7.

- - -

Carla Grieve is the District Two representative on the county's Library Advisory Board.

View Comments
https://www.naplesnews.com/story/news/local/communities/collier-citizen/2016/05/04/looking-at-our-libraries-all-10-collier-county-branches-receive-new-computers-software/85949686/
www.naplesnews.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-49
165609
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:DAGB2J2PC7Z7AN6HE6RTXCQAN3RBRDBB
<urn:uuid:e6dc6414-8c19-4970-a1d3-d76dc2b94c8a>
2022-12-05T01:23:22Z
146.75.38.62
text/html
sha1:VXVUY64DAN2EBVPD53RGW6DANAJLEESY
<urn:uuid:9b903162-1175-4d12-8a47-1109877b666c>
https://www.naplesnews.com/story/news/local/communities/collier-citizen/2016/05/04/looking-at-our-libraries-all-10-collier-county-branches-receive-new-computers-software/85949686/
response
<urn:uuid:d646032d-8745-40aa-bb78-122c22f228dd>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-49
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for November/December 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-40
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.4-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/