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Power Failure Unplugs San Jose Library’s Automated ServicesSan Jose (Calif.) Public Library, whose main Martin Luther King Jr. facility doubles as the San Jose State University library, suffered a network power failure that crashed its website September 30. Public access was restored the evening of October 3. During the outage, users could not use the library’s online catalog or other databases, and could not track due dates or renew materials through their personal accounts, although WiFi was available to patrons with laptops, the San Jose Mercury News reported October 2. Library workers manually checked out books using paper sign-out forms. “One of our reference librarians said it’s like going back to the early days of checking the Readers Guide to Periodicals,” said Lorraine Oback, marketing communications director for the library. She added that most patrons accepted the inconveniences caused by the outage with patience, although area resident Pat Hannon told the newspaper, “I found it amusing and ironic that the library in the capital of Silicon Valley has a computer that doesn’t work.” Oback told American Libraries that “We did a lot of testing of multiple systems” and replaced several parts, but that the library is unsure what specifically caused the power failure. She acknowledged that one working hypothesis is that strain from restarting the network after maintenance September 29 and 30 could have been the cause—“Like a light bulb that’s ready to go off, and when you turn it on, it goes ‘poof,’” Oback said. Posted on October 5, 2007. |
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