Busy Sunday!

Sunday, October 22, 2006, set a record for sessions on the Reference Department Public Access Computers (PACS). During the 3 hours and 50 minutes (the system shuts down 10 minutes prior to closing), WPL patrons completed 88 sessions with an aggregate total of 4,122 minutes--that's nearly 70 man hours of computer use! Computer users also found time to collect 89 print jobs with a total of 286 pages. There were times when as many as 20 patrons were on the automated waiting list.

We've also had a very busy month. In the last 30 days the system has provided 4,976 sessions consuming nearly a quarter of a million minutes. The printer has been used 3,923 times to generate 14,303 pages. Laid end-to-end those print jobs would reach nearly 2.5 miles.

Since mid-summer the WPL Reference Department has increased its pool of pacs by about 25%. By mid-December we expect to have a 50% increase over the beginning of the fiscal year. We've also increased bandwidth from a shared 3 megabit pipe to a dedicated 10 megabyte ethernet connection.

Keeping up with patron demand is difficult, but we'll the best that we can with what we have. Stay tuned!