Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | C | Computers in Libraries

Embrace the chaos.

Article Excerpt
As anyone who follows my column knows, I work at a very large and famous university. And I like to comment on what happens here. Although the library I manage is not a large one, working at the University of California--Berkeley places me in the middle of everything important in the profession. This makes every day exciting.

So imagine my further excitement when the central campus computing department embarked upon an earnest, multiple-year attempt to radically improve its IT-functional support. This move came when a new person was appointed as campus CIO. It so happens that that person values customer service very highly. Even better, he has a very good relationship with the central library administration at Berkeley. This focus on IT user services at the campus level has opened a dialogue about how to push library expertise beyond the library--and also how to welcome hard-core IT managers in our midst.

As part of the new push, an IT professional made a presentation to library managers that focused on the new interplay between scholarly content and all of those hand-held devices we love so much. He argued that all campus content managers must "embrace the chaos"--which is to say, we must have a plan for responding to the flood of new products, widgets, web tools, and gizmos that students use daily. Embrace the chaos further means that we must not only open our minds to today's hot technologies but also anticipate near- and long-term technology market horizons and be ready to respond. Wow--it's getting to be a lot to assimilate, isn't it?

Yes, it is a lot. But it puts me in mind...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!