Education and Libraries

The education sector was one of the first to adopt wireless access and offer its users a truly mobile experience.  Universities in particular have used wireless as a mechanism to help cope with the demands of large numbers of students needing on demand network access.  These large campuses are also regularly visited by external lecturers, exchange students or former alumni looking to take advantage of their wide range of services.  With its centralised approach, amigopod provides a simple web based interface that university staff across the campus can use to manage visitors and guests to that department without compromising security and without taking up valuable IT resources.  The amigopod self registration features also allow universities who host large conferences, seminars or public events to let the visitors do the work of account generation under a clearly defined security context.  In addition to the traditional visitor management, amigopod also allows universities to run a commercial hotspot with real time credit card billing and SMS receipt delivery.  With constant pressure to deliver more services to more students with less funding, amigopod offers universities a range of tools to help attract and manage visitors to the campus and offer them either free or commercial network access.

Libraries have long provided a valuable service to the community through the provision of information.  This started with traditional books and print media, however todays libraries are filled with people looking for information on the internet or library databases.  Most libraries provide free internet access for its members and traditionally this has been simple to manage through physical computers located at the library and managed by existing Library Management Systems (LMS).  As demand for these online services grows, libraries are increasingly looking for ways to make their services accessible by more and more people, however there is simply not enough funding for computers or space to house them.  With the installation of wireless networks, libraries have been able to continue to offer their services to members who wish to use their own laptops, although the management of this is challenging given that wireless infrastructure equipment typically does not integrate with the existing LMS user database.

amigopod can provide a simple and secure interface to provision temporary access accounts for library members.  Whether they are created on the fly by library staff or whether free scratch cards are handed out, amigopod can offer libraries complete control over access by existing members using their own laptops.  The ability to customise the look and feel, provide account receipts or scratch cards, instantly activate or deactivate an account makes amigopod a natural choice for libraries looking to offer simple value added services.  Our ability to report and log all visitor access also provides libraries with valuable feedback on the success of their deployment, critical to ongoing funding and government support.
 

   download: education.pdf