The most frequently visited educational and cultural institution in Duisburg is the City Library. Every year, more than 150,000 people use the facilities consisting of a central library, six larger regional libraries, seven smaller district libraries and two mobile libraries to make their selections from a comprehensive collection of knowledge including almost 800,000 media items. Supported by the various locations, the intention now is to push forward the widespread introduction of the Internet for all strata of the population. For this purpose, today’s Duisburg City Library offers as a matter of course modern Internet workstations as well as support and target-group oriented training for practical handling of this new medium.

Simple, reliable workstations
The Thin Clients, from the German manufacturer IGEL Technology, form the technological basis for most of the Internet workstations. Currently, around 90 compact, easy-to-operate workstations are situated in the public libraries and support residents of both the city and region in their library and Internet research. The City Library is gradually replacing its existing research PCs with thin clients, which are more cost-efficient and easier to maintain. “One of the most important criteria for the choice of manufacturer was robustness and user-friendliness,” explains Jochen Ebert, network administrator at the Duisburg City Library. The high number of users means that the terminals must be especially failure-proof and lay themselves open to attack from users as little as possible. In order to largely eliminate the possibility of mal-operation and the consequential maintenance costs, as well as uncontrolled data growth from the outset, the machines used in the City Library are not allowed to have floppy disk or CD-ROM drives. According to Jochen Ebert, the risk posed by computer viruses or unauthorised use of the prepared data is simply too great.

Central administration cuts costs
In 1999, as part of introducing a new library system and becoming Year 2000-compliant, the IT landscape of the public libraries was completely restructured. A server-based computing architecture with three terminal servers, one server for CD images and a total of 250 workstations is currently installed. The operating system on the server side is Windows 2000 Terminal Edition and Citrix MetaFrame 1.8. Communication with terminal devices is via the ICA standard protocol. Initially, exclusively PCs with appropriate client software were used. A weighted argument for the use of IGEL Thin Clients was the ability to administrate centrally and the low maintenance costs of the terminal devices compared to workstation PCs. As Jochen Ebert explained, “The IGEL Clients operate completely free of mechanical components such as fans or drives and therefore have a much longer life. Being able to administrate the devices centrally guarantees additional cost saving potential. To cite an example, the Clients can be upgraded to the latest operating system and software status within just minutes via a simple firmware upgrade.

Limitless surfing
Besides the recommendations from H&D, the IT service providers engaged to restructure the existing landscape, the extensive software of the terminal units was crucial to deciding on the German manufacturer. The client models predominately used today, IGEL Premium and IGEL Premium Plus, have a standard integrated Internet browser including a Java environment. This primary role of this central feature for the Duisburg City Library is to conserve the existing network resources. If the web applications on the application server were hosted centrally, the frequent, simultaneous call-ups would unnecessarily impact the network waveband. The high-performance IGEL Premium Plus also lessens impact on the resources through the integration of frequently used plug-ins such as Flash Player, Adobe PDF Reader and Real Player.

A secure future and flexible application
Another important criterion for the choice of model was the operating system on which the terminal devices run. From a license point of view, the IGEL Clients with the proprietary IGEL Embedded Flash Linux proved to be far more cost-effective than the comparable Windows CE or XP-based devices. What’s more, the selected IGEL models offer a host of additional functionalities.

The operating system stored on a Compact Flash Card is platform-independent and can be updated at any time through a simple exchange or a central upgrade procedure. This arrangement enables the heterogeneous system landscape to be homogenised and operated over the long-term future. The compatibility between terminal devices and the server platform used, however, does not depend on the Client operating system, but specifically on the integrated communication protocols such as Citrix ICA, Microsoft RDP or X-Windows. They enable the exchange of data between client and server, thereby guaranteeing smooth operation in various server environments.

Fast expansion in plug and play processes
The current IT planning of the City Library calls for the acquisition of another twenty devices. This would replace just under half the 250 PC workstations with the compact, insusceptible IGEL Thin Clients. The long-term plan is to replace all employee’s PC workstations with thin client technology. Cost centre managers need not fear high integration costs. As early as 1999, H&H had installed the first 23 IGEL machines ready for operation within just one week. No special server settings were required. Specific modifications were made only to the browser. Translating the interface from English into German, for instance, and configuring the daily “clean up” of favourites saved by the library users. “Apart from these customer-specific modifications, the IGEL models can literally be connected by the plug and play process. Compatibility problems did not arise.” Jochen Ebert describes his experiences since the introduction of the first IGEL devices. “The last four years have shown that the IGEL Thin Clients are precisely matched to our requirements. Our exacting requirements for stability and reliability have been satisfied in full.”