I’ve been in and out of a few libraries in a few towns lately. I gotta say, the library at the ol’ alma mater sure is a pleasure in comparison to some other, less good options.

The UoG Library seems to work on a very open-access policy. I remember when they first brought in a whack of research computers to respond to the increase in on-line academic journal availability, that they briefly blocked access to webmail. That phase ended pretty quick, I guess they realized that people use email as a research tool of sorts, emailing themselves links and papers, recieving links and papers from others. Since then they’ve only gone further, intentionally becoming a general-purpose computing provider. A subset of the computers in the building come loaded with all kinds of software you might need (including, apparently, a GIS facility) and rather than locking down the filing system they have it set so that all user-storage areas and profiles are simply wiped whenever a machine reboots. Machines reboot after half an hour of sitting idle. All computers have uncrippled (read: filtered) FTP and web access, with Firefox as a browser option, thank you.

Also, feel free to plug in your USB drive, ipod or web cam for file storage or… webcamming (yes, there is someone doing it behind me right now (hey, wait a minute)).

Best of all, all of this is available to anyone who walks in. At certain other institutions, I’ve come across the necessity for those with well-intentioned “guest access” to apply well in advance for temporary accounts, or restrictions from accessing any website other than the library’s internal pages (easily 90% of the online research I do has nothing to do with conventional journal indexes), or the need to enter a student ID anytime you want to access an external website or print, etc, etc. Not so at Guelph, which only requires that you sit down at a desktop and start clicking.

Except you aren’t even restricted to a desktop machine, since they even seem to have a program in which they will loan you a laptop for a couple of hours for wireless use inside the building. This saves them the need to fill more library space with desktops when there are plenty of study carrels and quiet corners that people would prefer to use anyway. What a great idea. Compared to other university and non-university libraries, Guelph is consistently scoring way ahead on it’s computing policies.