Pharos and Stuff

As many of you know, we have had  a few problems with sign-in credentials on student computers. Sometimes that is from user error--especially when students see "Sign in with your GPC username" on the screen.  It's confusing.  And sometimes, as in my case, the new GSU creds don't work, but the old GPC ones do. We're moving to the system that is used throughout GSU campus computers:  the GSU active directory, which will consistently accept GSU credentials.  Administered by IIT.

We will no longer have the Pharos sign-in agent on our student computers. What does that mean for us?  You can forget your Pharos password because we will no longer have a console to monitor the computers in the library for troubleshooting or terminating sessions for students or making visitor IDs. Tamika is meeting with people from downtown about how they take care of these essential functions and will hopefully have news for us within a few days.

Pharos will still be the system for sending print jobs to the release stations. Administered by the Pharos team.

Panther cards pay for printing, and the Dunwoody Panther Card Office has had multiple complaints that that student cards aren't working to pay for printing at the library. We haven't seen a big rise in complaints here, but the Auxillary Services people are concerned about student complaints.  (They called us.) Administered by Auxillary Services.

When students come here to work and print, they must deal with 3 separate systems administered by three separate units, and we're stuck in the middle trying to help.  The best advice for us (from all three of those tech units) is to pay attention to what part of the process seems to cause trouble and then share that information with them.  Therefore, we are keeping a log at the desk of technical problems with student computers and printing.

When there is a problem, please enter the date and time, the user ID of the patron, and a description of the problem under whichever of the three systems you see to be the point of trouble.  Hopefully we won't have to do it very long. Thanks for helping with this.