Otherwise, insist on using an operating system other than MS Windows, this seems to deter IT services from wanting to know you.

A new town manager came in and decided that all IT should and would be done by the town IT department. My feeling is that a certain type of IT person wants control and is not interested in supporting the work that should and could be done. They also have such an exagerated idea of security needs that anything new or different seems like a threat to them. I have often said that if our IT department in town protected their houses as they protect our computers their houses would have bars on all the windows, triple and quadruple locks on all doors and the roll down metal door over the garage door.

So we too had this same discussion about alternate browsers for testing our webpages. No luck it’s been 3 years at least. Logic does not work because you are operating on two different systems of beliefs. What seems logical to one system is dangerous in another.

We have gotten to be experts at working around the restrictions placed on us by our IT department that does not understand our mission. we use http://browsershots.org/ to test our website in different browsers.

We are talking about using Meebo to offer IM reference since we can’t install IM applications on our computers.

Why are IT services employed? To hinder valid work, or to provide support so that you can do your work? It isn’t up to IT services to decide how you will work with your students, it’s up to the teaching staff. It might be up to IT people to find out how to get the functions you want onto their chosen platform, but whining about security just demonstrates that they have made the foolish mistake of installing less-than-par operating systems that do not tolerate connection to networks.

By dictating what a user can or cannot do when working, they are not doing their job, they are proving their inability to provide proper support to help users get their work done, as well as their ineptitude when it comes to IT management. Good enough reasons to give them the old heave-ho if this persists.

[/invective]

OMG

As the “IT department” at my library we offer both IE and Firefox, but also our computers are protected so that they allow *any and all* downloads until they are restarted – which then wipes the hard drive back to its original state. So, virtually any browser can be used. How does this help? Well it doesn’t – but it brings up another question that needs to be thought about: the relationship between the library/librarian and the IT department. A pivotal one in my humble opinion. If future librarians want to be successful in the digital realm, they’ll have to cultivate this relationship not with brownie points and luck, but with understanding of the ITs viewpoint. I think if you can foster a good relationship with IT, you’ll have further success down the road with anything from Firefox installs to MySql database help.

As for your letter, I think it is spot on. Cordial and with some pedagogical reasoning for why your app needs to be installed. I good representation of how to spark a relationship with IT.

~Kyle~

(Answer I received when trying to place firefox on public library computers.)

Portable apps off a flash drive work on our public access computers. If the firewall is too restrictive, they may not allow it. Furthermore, the latest firefox upgrade (to correct a bug in quicktime) further requires a lowering of the firewall. Causing other problems.

Try the portable apps route. It works for us here and we sell flash drives. Easiest workaround so far. Plus if students personalize it, they can take it anywhere.