Page 25 - Campus Technology, March/April 2019

Higher education IT departments and libraries have long had overlapping responsibilities, yet for the most part they have remained separate entities. Could it be time for a new kind of alliance?
By Dian Schaffhauser
Lisa Forrest had been on the job just a week or two as the new library director at David- son College (NC) when John McCann, man- ager of the User Success Team, came and asked if Forrest would be interested in piloting something new: placing student technology consultants from the Technology & Innovation (T&I) division along- side her own student library assistants. The idea was to create a blended service model in the library. Forrest, a self-professed pilot-project junkie, responded, “I don’t see why not.” The result: “It’s added a really great energy to the library space and has made it a lot easier for our students and faculty to find research and technol- ogy help.”
Of course, she added, the pilot at the North Car- olina school hasn’t come without its growing pains. For example, T&I consultants wore head- phones and the library assistants didn’t. T&I con- sultants were allowed to eat at their stations and the library assistants weren’t. Neither group was accustomed to wearing name tags. And people who came up to the desk were confused about where to go for assistance on, say, checking out a book versus getting help with a password.
Those little issues have been resolved. (IT people still wear the headsets since they’re on the phone a lot; food is eaten in a different room; everybody has matching name tags; and a designer came up with “inexpensive vinyl signage” to direct people to the correct side of the desk to get the help they want.) But more importantly, the library and the IT organization have begun developing a relationship that’s uncovering new ways of working together and sorting out “areas of overlap” that can lead to better service across the board.
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