Thanks for passing on the suggestions about flash drives.
We are exploring this possibility, along with some other options. However, we are somewhat hesitant to loan out a small device that is not only easily lost, but also one that stores personal and private data.
A few questions for you all:
When and why are they requested?
Do you own a flash drive?
Do other students tend to own their own flash drives?
If we loaned them out, how long should the loan period be?
Thanks for the feedback!
Elin
I don’t get a huge amount of requests for flash drives in the evening, but when I do, 3 out of 4 are at or near closing. My usual tactic is to remind students they should use Tigercat or email their document to themselves.
Obviously a difficulty with loaning flash drives is that they’re so easily lost. At any given moment there’s often a flash drive in our lost & found. If we were to circulate flash drives, I would vote to use unclaimed items from lost & found instead of purchasing them. It wouldn’t impact our budget, and also we wouldn’t have to bill students for losing them.
Near finals time there were more requests for flash drives, because the student didn’t like tigercat for some reason and didn’t want to carry around the large external hard drive.
I own my own flash drive, and I think most students do, they aren’t very expensive.
I like Steve’s idea about using the unclaimed ones for circulation. If we do circulate them, I would think that a similar loan period to external hard drives would be reasonable.
I think if you start loaning out flash drives you’re looking to repeat the issue we are having with the ethernet cables. Once students see that drives are available they won’t bother to bring their own or save to tigercat. Any student heading off to college should count a thumb drive as essential as a pack pack. Secondly, from a budget stand point let’s save money for what’s really needed. Lastly, this is what tigercat is for.
Here’s our response on the LIS Suggestions blog. Thanks!