Why we need Librarians in IT Shops

Susan Earley

Shared Drives

How did this happen?

• In most organizations, the practice of organizing documents is left to anyone who either shows an interest or insufficient protest.

• Any effort relies on the organization skills of the IT staff involved (who may not have the skills and/or training necessary) to create and organize.

What is in the Library?

• A plethora of documents covering the systems and projects, all of inconsistent format, scope, content, quality, and location.

• Most of this data is unstructured in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and other digital document formats.

Tools do not solve the problem

• Without an organization plan, moving to a tool like wiki, Sharepoint, alFresco, etc. only replicates the problem in a new environment.

• Adding tools makes it worse because the material is almost never removed from the old tool, so old links or bookmarks will still work.

Root Cause

We fail to treat system documentation as data. • We are constantly working on changing our

documentation standards. • This is the same issue that electronic storage

faces for data management – making sure old archives are either converted to new technology, or old technology is kept around long after its lifecycle ends, to ensure access to the archival information.

Why Librarians?

Librarians are trained to organize documents.Given the importance of documentation in IT shops, and its use as a source of metadata, there’s a good case for instituting library science processes and procedures to keep the IT documentation organized and useful.

Librarians can focus on the organization part, leaving others to focus on development and creating content.

Library Science

• Library science (often termed library studies or library and information science[1]) is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information resources; and the political economy of information. - wikipedia

More Information

• http://www.ala.org/lita/

• http://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/librarians.htm

• http://www.dataversity.net/the-case-for-technical-librarians-in-an-it-shop/