[Web4lib] blue sky thinking

[McHale, Nina]

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.

Nina

Nina McHale
Auraria Library
Denver, Colorado


-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org on behalf of Steve Oberg
Sent: Wed 7/26/2006 11:10 AM
To: web4lib
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] blue sky thinking
 
I agree that communication with IT folks is critical.  All too often,
however, the communication can be rather one-sided.  By this I mean
that mission critical systems may be taken down with no warning or
communication of any kind from IT.  Decisions about infrastructure,
authentication, hardware and software, and more, are frequently made
by IT without any consultation with those affected in libraries.  This
is what I find particularly frustrating.  This is not true of all IT
operations by any means, but I know that it is true of some.  What I'm
getting at is yes, we need to try as much as possible to "play nice"
and talk with one another, but that becomes difficult when the library
is not even at the table for discussion, or in the loop at all in
terms of communication.  Changing this kind of situation takes a
tremendous amount of patience, energy, and long term effort.  It can
happen!

On the other hand, there are times and situations when we simply
cannot afford to sit and wait, or rely upon a long term dialog to work
out troubles.  This is where the option to outsource or to "go it
alone" if that's possible, needs to be kept in mind.

Steve

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Steve Oberg
Family Man Librarian
www.familymanlibrarian.com
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