This was more of a traditional session than my first one – it was a panel (2 academic library folks and me) and we all gave a brief intro to our organization, then discussed the ways in which our IT departments are changing/have changed in response to changing technological realities. Carole and Terry – my co-panelists – gave interesting discussions on how their IT Departments have evolved with the times. Carole’s library began a formal Project Management procedure that sounded quite interesting. Terry’s library reorganized and reformed to improve how they serve their customers. I wish I could be more specific, but I was on the podium and listening, not taking notes and the whole thing was a long time ago…
My presentation was on the Web2.0ification of our library’s IT Department. We have made some changes in how we do our basic functions (offloading some of the work – such as web updates – to non-IT people, outsourcing some functions – hello Google Apps for Domains!, etc.) and we’ve made some changes in the way we think about things like security and privacy (not in a bad, way, though – I promise) in order to facilitate our patrons and staff in their use of Web 2.0 technologies.
We went a bit long and didn’t have much time for questions after, but several people came up after the session ended to chat more about what we were doing – and what was more interesting (at least for me) – what they are doing! The session was a great way to find out what IT departments, in different types of libraries, are doing to react to Web 2.0, greater customer service demands from our staff and opportunities that are coming our way!
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