Thing 45 -- Cloud Computing

Personally, I’ve been cloud computing ever since I set up my first Yahoo Mail account. Anyone who uses more than one computer during the day can understand the convenience of being able to check your e-mail from anywhere. It would also be nice to be able to work on any app from anywhere with just a cheap notebook computer, using the cloud for most of the processing and memory. I have noticed during this session of 23 Things, however, that several sites did not work well due apparently to overloaded servers. This does not bode well for using any critical app from the cloud, much less an operating system. At the rate things change in the computer world, however, it may not take long for technology to catch up to aspiration. In the meantime, I am more concerned with privacy and security issues. If companies that handle credit card information are not using adequate security features, how far can we trust the free versions of cloud software? So far, photos are the major thing after e-mail that I have used cloud computing for. I even back up at home.

Let’s get back to libraries here for a minute. Ours, as part of a larger organization, has its own type of “cloud” in the organization’s network. (Would this be a “fog” because it is closer to the ground?) We use SharePoint for our calendar and have document- sharing capability as well. We are investigating SharePoint’s wiki capabilities with an eye toward transferring our PBWorks wikis to it. The advantages of using network applications are security and backup. Of course if the network goes down we don’t have access, but we wouldn’t have access to the cloud, either.

Also of interest to libraries is how cloud computing will affect our public access PCs. Our library has a limited number of public PCs and our policies limit their use to legal research. We offer word processing only on a non-networked PC, which functions basically as an emergency typewriter. This way, users can’t monopolize the computers writing their briefs. But what happens when the user’s document is in the cloud? We do offer WiFi, but that won’t get you our premium subscription services. On one occasion, we had a patron camped at one of the public PCs with his laptop beside him. The future is complicated.