Specialized computer labs: care and feeding

This paper is a brief overview of some of the challenges and successes related to the support of a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Windows lab and a music technology Mac OS lab at Williams College. Specialized computer labs can present some surprising issues that set them apart from general academic computer labs. The GIS lab and music technology labs at Williams have provided many examples of such challenges, including: Finding academic pricing for non-academic software. Creating secure lab spaces. Handling unusual license management, including dongles and hasps, as well as software management schemes that involve locking software to a specific computer. Working around security issues with products that assume that all users have full administrative access to the lab computers. Solving peripheral software and hardware interface challenges. Training users and creating effective documentation. Troubleshooting non-standard hardware and software-intensive lab stations. Creating and deploying an image for a specialty lab.The authors share their experience supporting these labs and confronting some of these issues at Williams College.