2013

Creating Scalable Laptop Services in Support of Learning & Research: Join Us in Chicago for a LITA Preconference

Since its inception a decade ago, the laptop lending service at the UCLA Library has become a cornerstone of the UCLA experience for students and instructors. With a campus of nearly 40,000 students, laptop lending operates on a large scale: Last year alone, our fleet of 275 laptops were checked out over 100,000 times across 7 lending locations, with an average checkout time of 2.7 hours. Another 100 laptops were used in classrooms for a combined 20 weeks of instruction.

Our current system of managing laptops has evolved with hardware choices, staffing changes, patron requests, lending methods and the forward march of technology. We expect to continue this evolution as we address physical and virtual security, increasingly collaborative environments, software virtualization, and the growing momentum behind mobile devices.

  •  Are you looking to institute a laptop or other mobile device lending program?
  • Do you have an existing program that you’d like to expand?
  • Want to gather ideas about what software to offer patrons while keeping the laptops secure?
  • Want to see how we clone 350 laptops on a quarterly basis?

Please join us for a hands-on workshop that will help you strategize key technical, administrative and instructional considerations at the LITA Pre-Conference Workshop Creating Scalable Laptop Services in Support of Learning & Research Friday, June 28, 2013, 8:30 am – 4:00 pm Event Code: LIT1

The UCLA Library currently provides close to 500 dual-boot laptops for instruction and short-term loans to all UCLA students, faculty and staff. Each laptop offers the OS X and Windows operating systems with software packages in support of instruction and research. Library staff share the workflow and logistical details for preparing software, imaging the machines, tracking software licensing, processing lending through an ILS (Voyager) and maintaining the hardware and software.