{"id":273,"date":"2007-09-11T16:23:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-11T04:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deborahfitchett.com\/blog\/?p=273"},"modified":"2007-09-11T16:23:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-11T04:23:00","slug":"itlibrary-relationships-understanding-the-it-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deborahfitchett.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/itlibrary-relationships-understanding-the-it-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"IT\/library relationships: understanding the IT perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Peter Darlington<\/b><br \/>Obligatory Paula Ryan joke. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Talking about taking a leap out of libraries into IT.  Different but a lot in common as well.<br \/>Started in basement of NatLib.  Experienced earthquake there &#8211; fantastic &#8211; sounded like train &#8211; everything swaying, sewer pipes above heads.<br \/>Later at help desk at NZBN.  When talked to computer guys then they&#8217;d tut-tut as if answer too far over heads.<br \/>Got job with newfangled PC network though hadn&#8217;t seen one before.  Access a key issue.Customer service Internet came around at same time as did self out of job by joining networks together.  But had learned tremendous amount in meantime of running network.<br \/>Got job in IT for money; influence decision-making; make business work better &#8211; tech is a great business-enabler.<\/p>\n<p>Why are IT people so evil?<br \/>Look up &#8220;BOFH&#8221; on google&#8230;.<br \/>Tricky part of new job was learning how to be disliked &#8211; had to make unpopular choices.  Eg everyone using different applications., and he brought in a single package &#8211; robably not forgiven yet.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<\/p>\n<li>performance is king &#8211; needs to be dependable.  Everything affects everything else like an ecosystem.\n<\/li>\n<li>security &#8211; viruses, spyware, etc &#8211; you can&#8217;t do anything but you&#8217;re safe&#8230;\n<\/li>\n<li>complex sstems &#8211; new things affect old things\n<\/li>\n<li>cynicism &#8211;  &#8211; coming out of bad solutions.  Trying to limit number of new projects because of things falling over.\n<\/li>\n<li>planning for the worst.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Neat ideas automatically filtered up through all these points &#8211; if it survives then IT will be on board.<\/p>\n<p>Living with the enemy<\/p>\n<ul>\n<\/p>\n<li>learning to speak the language &#8211; living in the digital world &#8211; being comfortable with the stuff and knowing what things can do.\n<\/li>\n<li>understanding the repercussions &#8211; two sides to every fence\n<\/li>\n<li>learning about the business &#8211; \n<\/li>\n<li>getting involved &#8211; bring own skills into it projects\n<\/li>\n<li>learn about processes and projects\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My inconsequential view: Informational literacy among customers as important to it as to reference; good at description\/classification; letting customers loose.<\/p>\n<p><b>Questions<\/b><br \/><i>Comment that need to educate them about your own needs<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>re building relationships &#8211; developing trust vital but informally what about service level agreements?<\/i> &#8211; If you must have them, keep it simple.  And remember &#8216;agreement&#8217; is negotiated, not forced on you.<\/p>\n<p><i>often translating what IT role back to clients &#8211; how can a client deal with when X blames Y and Y blames X for a problem?<\/i>  Don&#8217;t know &#8211; is in a small organisation so not an issue.<\/p>\n<p><i>still happy with having combined library and council networks (as library needs less security)?<\/i>  Nowadays can separate network but keep connected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peter DarlingtonObligatory Paula Ryan joke. \ud83d\ude42 Talking about taking a leap out of libraries into IT. Different but a lot in common as well.Started in basement of NatLib. Experienced earthquake there &#8211; fantastic &#8211; sounded like train &#8211; everything swaying, sewer pipes above heads.Later at help desk at NZBN. When talked to computer guys then [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[225],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deborahfitchett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deborahfitchett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deborahfitchett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deborahfitchett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deborahfitchett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/deborahfitchett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deborahfitchett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deborahfitchett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deborahfitchett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}