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It's hard to know whether to adopt a new web technology without kicking its tires. Which blog or wiki software works best for your library? What does a portal look like? Is a given app easy or hard to administer or redesign? How will you know, if you can't try it?

I suggest two ways of making your library a web-technology sandbox: building a test server, and signing up with a web-hosting service.

A test server can be put together out of a desktop or laptop computer that would otherwise be discarded. It won't be fast or slick—but it doesn't have to be, does it? For security and guiltlessness when things break, try to put this machine on your intranet (if you have one) rather than opening it for visits from the internet at large. And—I can't stress this enough—don't ever run actual library services off this machine! Experimentation will occasionally cause this machine to fail badly—that's what it's there for!

This machine should ideally be running a web environment roughly similar to what your library already uses for its website; the closer together your test and "production" environments are, the easier you will find it to migrate services out of testing for public use. For libraries whose website servers run on Windows or Mac OS, this does present a cost issue: the additional license fees. For libraries whose websites run on Linux, FreeBSD, or some other free flavor of Unix, however, there is no software cost.

For the widest variety of web applications to run on your test server, it should probably run Perl, Python, PHP, Java, and Ruby. These are the commonest programming languages for web applications to be written in (though the first three are currently commoner for small apps than the latter two). Your test server should also run at least one database application; most web applications are built for MySQL, but it doesn't hurt to have Postgres available as well.

But what if (for whatever reason) you can't possibly create a test server at your library, but you still want to try things out? All is not lost! A sandbox at a low-cost webhost may be just what the sysadmin ordered.

Just any webhost won't do; you want more freedom to mess around with things than many hosts offer. Look for a webhost and hosting plan that offers "shell access" as well as FTP. You also want a feature called (variously) ".htaccess" or some variant on "password-protected directories." This enables you to hide your tests from public view. You do not, however, need what's called a "virtual server," nor should you need root access.

One-click installs of popular web software are a lovely feature if you have technical staff who will install software for you on your library's webservers. Otherwise, I really recommend that you wade through software installation on your own whenever possible.

The library-focused LISHost offers the necessary functionality at $10 per month, as does DreamHost. (Disclaimer: I am a DreamHost customer for my personal sites. I have found the service good, but downtime has occasionally become an issue.) Shop around, if only to discover what your options are.

Happy testing!