Re: Public Access Library Ports (was Re: Open access to student labs

["Christopher E. Cramer" <chris.cramer () DUKE EDU>]

On Thu, 21 Dec 2006, Valdis Kletnieks wrote:

> On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 14:21:05 PST, Samuel Young said:
> > We require our students and visitors to logon to our network everywhere.
> > There are a few computers in the library that allow public access, but we
> > are about to close that loop as well.
>
> Often, librarians have cows and kittens when the network people threaten
> to close that loophole (for reasons that are totally justified in their
> world view).  What methods and/or reasoning did sites use to win the political
> battle (or equally interesting, did the library win)?

Personally, I never saw the point in fighting that battle.  The incidents
of abuse from these unauthenticated computers are so few and the benefit
to the library's mission so great that we never saw a point in forcing
them to authenticate on these computers.  We have taken steps to minimize
the problems from the rare cases where people do abuse the computers, but
all in all, it's been a partnership, not a fight.

-chris

--
Christopher E. Cramer, Ph.D.
University Information Technology Security Officer
Duke University,  Office of Information Technology
334 Blackwell St., Suite 2106, Durham, NC 27701
PH: 919-660-7003  FAX: 919-660-7076  CELL: 919-210-0528