chromebox catalog station

[Lucien Kress]

Has anyone documented the settings for their chrome-based catalog station in a sharable way?

I think I understand the basics, but I am using the managed guest session model and I haven't figured out how to prevent the user from typing an address into the URL bar or open a new browser window or tab. I have an idea I can only do this in kiosk mode, and the process for creating a web app is a little intimidating. I'd love to take a look at your setup.

As a secondary question, is there in fact any way to document settings in a sharable way? I'd love to just be able to download a config file but I haven't discovered that capability.

Lucien

Lucien Kress IT Manager 360-906-4910 Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries – Operations Center 2018 Grand Blvd Vancouver, WA 98661

NOTICE: Under Washington State's Public Records Act (RCW 42.56), email communications to and from this or any Fort Vancouver Regional Library District email account can be subject to public disclosure to a third-party requester.

[Michelle Mears]

I confess, we made a kiosk app so long ago and the OPACs just keep on ticking and I don’t know that we ever documented how we did it, and the staff who were here are long gone.  I literally think our OPACs have been up and running for 8 years straight.  If the power goes out we just turn them back on.  Let me see what I can find in my dusty I.T. notebook, I feel like we wrote something down at one point.  The kiosk app-making part was not hard, but Google could have changed it fifty times since then.  I don’t see any export or config capability, I think we have been asking for that for ages.  The AUE on my OPAC Chromeboxes was September 2019, LOL.

 

Michelle Mears     Rolling Hills Library, MO

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ChromeOS in Libraries" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to chromebooks_l...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/chromebooks_lib/CACddhmW8x7_ovjJJY8c3hOZ%2B2pHsSg5GbusH2MdyQA%3D3ZGQUWg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Charles Ellis]

Michelle,

My developers tell me it would be relatively easy to write a chrome extension to do that. We would make it available for no cost. We have been looking for a way we could give back to the public library community, and this looks like a good way to do it.

I’ll let you know. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Charles Ellis, PhD.

Director, Technical Sales

Libdata.com

334-750-0734

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/chromebooks_lib/7a173559dd9eb0d7698d5c2996a8b131%40mail.gmail.com.

[Amy Gibbons]

Maybe not what you were looking for, but our OPACs are set up with strict allow- and deny-URL lists. Start with "Deny everything" and then allow catalog URL, URLs of where the images in catalog come from, etc (view source of page). We also had to allow all the database URLs because database usage is expected at our OPACs. It's not perfect but works fairly well.

[Michelle Mears]

This is what I found in my notes…

In 2015 we bought Chromeboxes for all the OPACs.  We started off with settings we got from the Salina (KS) Public Library that followed Amy’s advice, which was to block all http:// and https:// and then whitelist the ones you wanted to allow only.  Then we created our own Chrome kiosk app (info on how to do this here (https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/3316168) and then we later changed to an app called KIOSK by Cook.Company https://kiosk.cook.company/.  I can’t find this now in the Marketplace, it looks like the developer has not updated it in a long time.  It is a kiosk mode interface, so it does not show an address bar or search bar at the top.  Even though our catalog shows links to our online resources, we have not added all the locations to a whitelist, because with the free version of Kiosk app each station’s settings are configured manually.  This is all assuming you are using Enterprise management with ChromeOS devices.

 

I would be interested in a Chrome extension/app that would take care of all the settings for us and give us a chance to allow/block sites as needed.  Now that this topic has come up I am paranoid that our OPACs are just going to stop working at any minute, LOL.

 

Michelle

 

Michelle Mears     Rolling Hills Library, MO

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/chromebooks_lib/CABJwswJjM%2B1Kap%2BgAWfiENdKsQ%3DVo1FSpigfHp1qCMLEs-Hb0A%40mail.gmail.com.

[Anthony Lucarelli]

We have a custom URL that lands users on a page we created on our website. This URL is routed through our firewall where we built an allow list of URLs that those Chromeboxes could access (databases, online services, e-materials, etc.).

I wasn't the person who put this together, so I don't know exactly how traffic from the OPAC Chromeboxes is directed through the firewall (versus all other library traffic that comes off our Windows PCs) to make this work.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/chromebooks_lib/b75ed6746b48679c23ac5c4adc56f4a9%40mail.gmail.com.