Over this past summer, several campus computer labs and Penrose Library received new technology to bring their services up-to-date with the most current software and hardware available.
According to IT Support Service Consultant Robert Fricke, the Maxey Hall and Hall of Science general purpose computer labs received the most noticeable change with all the PCs getting upgraded to Windows 7 and Office 2010, the latest operating system and word processing software available from the Microsoft Corporation.
In order to support this transition to Windows 7 and Office 2010, WCTS has created informational materials that can be found on its website. Documentation includes instructions for using GoPrint on Windows 7 machines.
WCTS will hold informational workshops on Windows 7 and Office 2010 throughout the academic year. The workshops are open to all faculty, staff and students, and the complete list of workshop times and locations can be found on the WCTS website as well.
The library has also improved its technology services available to the Whitman community with the addition of a new walk-up scanner. The scanner, which is located by the copier on the second floor, takes an image of the documents that are placed on its surface which can range in size from something as small as a Post-it note to a 17 x 24 inch piece of paper: the same size as four standard 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper.
“We are really excited about it since it is a green machine,” said Julie Carter, instructional and access services librarian. “It uses no paper or toner and it is a great step towards being able to collaborate and communicate entirely digitally.”
Scanned documents can be sent to any e-mail address or retrieved with a thumb drive using the touch screen interface.
“We are lucky to be one of the very few libraries of this size to have this type of machine. It is pretty special that we are able to provide this type of technology to our students and faculty,” said Carter.
The scanner is also a valuable resource for students with learning disabilities as it has the ability to do searches of PDFs that have been scanned or to convert the text of a document into an audio file automatically.
