[Web4lib] blue sky thinking

[John Fereira]

McHale, Nina wrote:
> At Computers in Libraries this past March, there was a session about how to communicate with IT folks. There were a few minutes left after the presenter finished, so he asked the audience to share their experiences on the topic.  One guy raised his hand, and said, "Get IT people to come to your conferences! I'm not a librarian; I'm IT support, and I've learned so much about the way you all think!" The room broke out into applause.
>
>   
I've been following this thread with interest as I also work in IT.  In 
my case, however my unit library (1 of 20 on campus) has a fully staffed 
IT department consisting for 5 full time programmer/analyst, a unix 
system administrator, a public access computing support person, a staff 
computer support person, and an operations manager.  In addition to my 
programming/systems analysts responsibilities I am also the technology 
strategist and a system architect in the group. 

About five years ago I attended a LITA conference.  I attended sessions 
for two full days and in almost every one of the them there was a common 
phrase used.  That was, "you don't have to be a programmer to do this" 
or something along those lines.  After two day of hearing that I made 
sure that I filled on my conference evaluation form where I mentioned 
the oft-used phrase and the alienation I felt because I *was* a 
programmer.  Looking over the attendance lists showed that I was one of 
only a handful that, according to the provided job titles, was an IT 
person.  In other words, if increased participation from IT people 
(support and developers) is desired then a welcoming environment needs 
to exist rather than a "we can do this without programmers" mentality.

To be fair, I attended a LITA conference a couple of years ago and there 
seemed be a much higher representation of IT people and much better 
communication.  In fact, I did a collaborative presentation with Eric 
Morgan at that conference.