Central Library’s Computer Booking System Down For Now

Eileen Poh | poh.eileen@nus.edu.sg
Journalist
the ridge news
A NUSSU Publication

Sept. 6, 2008

Computer users at the Central Library no longer have to queue to book a computer.
(Photo credit: Eileen Poh)

Users who wish to use computers at Level 4 of the National University of Singapore’s Central Library will find the original booking system gone.

In place of the booking screen now is a printed notice informing users that “[the] booking system is currently not in use due to the recent upgrade of our computers to Window Vista”.

“Please proceed to any available terminal in the cluster, and log in with your NUS User ID and password,” says the notice as well.

The computer booking system at the Central Library’s cluster is temporarily down due to an unexpected system incompatibility with the new Windows Vista operating system that the computers are running.

“Windows Vista is built on new software architecture and has new security enhancements. Consequently, the booking system has to communicate with the new operating system in a different manner as it did with Windows XP,” said Mr. Caine Tan, chairperson of the NUS Students’ Union Computer Based Learning Centre (NUSSU CBLC).

Programmers at vendor Campus Supplies Pte Ltd are currently rewriting the script for the previous booking system.

However, further fine-tuning will still be required to remove technical errors when the system is up.

Despite the cumbersome process of rewriting and fine-tuning the software, there is no intention of abandoning the queue system.

“We had a case of one student writing in to tell us she wants the booking system back, when our earlier notification had caused some people to misunderstand that the abolition was permanent,” said Tan.

“People are generally in favour of the booking system,” he added.

Students seem to echo his views as majority approached by the ridge felt that the computer booking system is necessary.

“It does not make sense not to have a booking system,” said a first-year arts and social sciences student who declined to be named. “People who are more aggressive might get to the computers first as compared to others who are more gracious.”

First-year engineering student Eric Lim agrees, saying that the computer booking system will ensure fairness in usage of the computers.

“A person who came later than someone else may be standing behind a computer user who is finishing his work,” said Lim. “So he gets the priority even though he was there later. ”Fairness is exactly what NUSSU CBLC and the NUS Libraries had hoped to introduce when they first proposed the idea of having a booking system for the computers. “We wanted to give every student an equal chance of using the computers at the Central Library,” said Tan.

The current login screen on each desktop (Photo Credit: Eileen Poh)

In the previous computer booking system, users joined a queue and booked their choice workstation at the booking screen beside the cluster helpdesk.

Users were limited to an hour of usage with an automatic prompt by the system for a time extension if there was no queue.

With the temporary abolition of the system, computer-hogging problems surface, as users are no longer constrained by the one-hour time limit.

Mabel Chua, third-year arts and social sciences student said there are people who reserved the computers “for over an hour to type their blog entries, check their Facebook accounts and even play games”.

“It is very inconsiderate of them to do so,” said Chua. “There might be others who are in a rush to print lecture notes or tutorial worksheets.”

With the computer booking system expected to be back later this month, NUS will be the first university in Singapore to have a computer booking system running on Windows Vista.

Nanyang Technological University and the National Institute of Education currently have similar booking systems running on Window XP, a generation earlier of Vista.