Requests for Ethernet Cables

Thanks for passing on the comments and requests about barcoding and loaning our Ethernet cables.
We are considering alternatives to the yellow cable program. A little bit of history – prior to the yellow cable program we loaned out cables with laptops and power adapters. It was a collection that required a lot of time to process, inventory, maintain, and circulate – and it was at the suggestion of Circ Desk student employees that we explored other options to barcoding loaner cables. At this time, we may not be able to justify the expenditure on time and budget dollars required to loan out a very affordable $5 piece of equipment.

Cables can be purchased for about $5 at the bookstore
Please pass on ideas about how we can encourage the return of the cables!

See below for Mike Roy’s comment on the LIS Suggestion Blog
The yellow cable problem is something we have, alas, given much thought to. What began as a simple way to provide students with a resource that they could borrow and return on the honor system has turned into a bit of a nightmare. It turns out that lots of people borrow the cables, but barely any return them, resulting in hundreds of cables having gone missing. When we decided that this was no longer a good way to spend our precious budget dollars, people started stealing cables from our printers and desktop computers, rendering these devices temporarily useless. While we agree that barcoding and loaning out cables might work, and we’ll explore the logistics and costs of this, we do wonder what’s going on that people feel it is okay to steal cables from the College’s computers and printers. Also, given that we provide wireless network access to much of the campus, we also wonder why these cables are still in such high demand. And then there is the same question that we wonder about missing socks: where do all these stolen cables end up?