[WEB4LIB] Presentation help

[latham1]

My biggest complaint with administrators is that they don't understand the 
division of labor in a larger computer department.  They don't understand why 
you don't want your operations manager doing PC maintenance, or why your 
webmaster can't re-boot the Tandem ILS.  they seem to believe that all 
computer people know everything about all of it, so you can just shift people 
around willy-nilly.

Second biggest compaliant is that they take no responsibility for their own 
technical competencies, or incompentencies.  They believe they are entitled to 
special treatment and don't have to know the basics they expect their own 
staff to know.  And, on top of that, they think it's cute.

Joyce Latham
an escapee from IT administration


===== Original Message From sgarwood at camden.lib.nj.us =====
>At the New Jersey Library Association I'm going to be doing a presentation
>called "Making Technology Easy: Talking to your Tech people" essentially
>it's going to be a presentation on communication styles of technical people
>and a technology "vocabulary lesson".
>
>My expected audience is department heads and library administrators. My
>general outline is to talk about the general communication styles of those
>who do technical work, talk about ways to improve communication, talk about
>terms that tech people would really like administrators to know, and also
>cover some basic computer terminology.
>
>Since I belive most of you to be technically oriented, my questions are:
>- Is/Are there any terms/concepts/issues that you really wished your
>library's administrators understood better? (Basically what are you biggest
>pet peeves)
>
>- Additionally, are there ways that you think the communication process
>could be better...example...I hate meetings I'd rather just get an email
>about something and "fix" it.
>
>Please just respond to me directly if you'd like...I don't want to burden
>the list too much with this. When my presentation is ready I'll post the URL
>to this list.
>
>Thanks in advance,
>
>Steve
>-------------------------------------
>Steve Garwood
>Customer Education Librarian
>Camden County Library System
>203 Laurel Rd., Voorhees, NJ 08043
>(856)772-1636 x3320 Fax:(856)772-6128
>sgarwood at camden.lib.nj.us
>http://www.camden.lib.nj.us
>http://www.stevegarwood.com
>
>"Nobody loves me but my mother...and she could be jivin too"  - B.B. King

J.M. Latham
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois -- Urbana Champaign
latham1 at students.uiuc.edu