Indestructible / unstealable stationery for busy library.

October 8, 2009 9:35 AM

Is there a UK supplier of stationery designed to remain, erm, stationary? We need some for students to use in the academic library but don't want it to be broken or, ahem, grow legs.

I'm thinking stuff you can literally bolt or chain to a desk, or even a ready-made unit including staplers, hole punches, pens on chains, parper guillotines etc etc for the usual scholarly desk work. I've looked on Gresswell.com but it all looks very flimsy and not very nailed down.

posted by KMH to Work & Money (2 answers total)

I solved this problem in an academic environment with Tryten security cables and self adhesive loops or screw on loops.

The self adhesive loops can't be pried off of anything you stick them to like three hole punches and staplers¹ or anything with a 1x3 flatish area. Yet staff can easily release the device if needed. They have a wide variety of loop shapes not shown on their site though I found the one pictured to be most useful. One cable and lock can secure several devices; I think their longest cable was around three metres.

One big advantage is you can use padlocks that are all keyed alike so you only need one key for any device. Or you can have some of the devices keyed separately or using combination locks to allow more fine grained control.

With a bit of creative routing we also used to use them to prevent users from opening paper tray on printers.

And of course they can be used to secure A/V equipment and computers so you only need to deal with one system.

¹ I used them on practically everything including ociliscopes, DVMs, printers, desks, Smart Boards, portable white boards, and lab equipment. Anything that was permanant and tended to disappear or be misplaced.
posted by Mitheral at 10:33 AM on October 8, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks Mitheral!!!! :)
posted by KMH at 10:45 AM on October 8, 2009