IT Position Description: Cross-Fertilization

[Craighton Hippenhammer]

In the academic realm there seems to be a theory that mixing up job duties in everyone's job descriptions is beneficial to both the librarian and the institution in a sort of cross-fertilization way.  I think this idea is foreign to public libraries, and from my experience in PLs would be abhorrent to them.  (What?  Put a cataloger on the Reference Desk?  You crazy?)

Just wondering whether anyone feels strongly one way or another concerning this.  I realize that in smaller institutions, staff often have to wear many hats, but is it preferable?  Or is that wasting personality-type orientation, talent and interest?

A related question:  assuming a moderately competent computer center, how many students must a college or university have before you can justify having a full-time IT librarian?


Craighton Hippenhammer
Information Technology Librarian
Olivet Nazarene University
chhammer at olivet.edu



*********************************************************************
Due to deletion of content types excluded from this list by policy,
this multipart message was reduced to a single part, and from there
to a plain text message.
*********************************************************************