The Pakistani Spectator

It’s not difficult to say that those who run libraries not to know all that much about technology. A set of skills are required to run an organization, and those skills do not often come in package form along with technical knowledge and experience. But administrators should know some specific things about technology in order to do their jobs well, so here is list in detail:

1. Technology isn’t as hard as we think it is. At least compared to years ago it isn’t. Any competent library technologist can take a server from scratch to a fully-functioning web site in a day. And with services like Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), you don’t even need hardware to get a site up and going in no time., you can go from nothing to a fully-functional LAMP stack (operating system, web server, database, and programming language) as well as any of a number of free content management systems (e.g., Drupal) in less than a day. Sure, there are some things that are still quite time consuming and complicated (e.g., writing software from scratch), but many of the basic services are today quite easy and fast.

2. Technology gets easier all the time. I recall a time not all that long ago when installing software on UNIX was a difficult job. You would need to download the release, then configure it, then compile it. Now installing applications and any required dependencies can be as simple as a one-line command Plus, there are now projects like Bitnami that have pre-packaged complete technology stacks that can take you from scratch to fully-functional in a variety of applications in no time at all.

3. Technology gets cheaper all the time. When we rent a server from a service provider, and have for years. Recently when we filled our disk drive we realized that we could pay the same amount per month but upgrade to a server with twice the RAM and more than twice the amount of disk space. Just keep breathing and what we can buy for the same amount of money gets better all the time.

4. Maximize the effectiveness of your most costly technology investment — your people. As technology itself falls in price per unit, your staff is likely to get more expensive. So pay attention to what is required to make the most effective use of them. This means getting them the training and resources they need to do their job well. I can’t believe how many administrators skimp on hardware and make their staff make do with inadequate amounts of RAM and processors when they are the least expensive part of the equation. If , you do not want your most expensive resource sitting around waiting for your least expensive resource to boot up.

5. Iterate, don’t perfect. Librarians seem to love perfection. We don’t want to put any technology out for the public to use until we think it is perfect. Well, we need to get over ourselves. One of the major benefits of this is that your users can provide early feedback on what they like and don’t like, thereby providing essential input into further development. Do not be afraid of a “beta” or “prototype” label — people are now accustomed to such, and it can provide the necessary “cover” to being less than perfect.

6. Be prepared to fail. The twin to our tendency toward perfection is our fear of failure. But just like the pursuit of perfection is the enemy of progress, so is our fear of failure. Popular organizations know that they will throw many things against the wall and only some will stick. But you don’t usually know ahead of time which ones they will be, this means you must be prepared for some experiments to fail. Just learn what you can and move on.

7. Be prepared to succeed. Hardly any technology success can be truly successful without a set of associated non-technology efforts to support it. Full administrative support that is communicated throughout the organization is essential, to alert your user community to a new web site or tool. Don’t make the mistake of implementing a technology well but fail to get it out the door properly.

8. Never underestimate the power of a prototype. It is simple implementations of a new site or service that can help demonstrate what a fully-developed site or service would be like. Since many of us find it difficult to imagine a new site or service from a text description, it can spark understanding in a way that few things can. Also, they tend to be much easier and faster to put together and can provide enough learning opportunities so that if you decide to support full development, the result will be more effective than it would have been otherwise.

9. A major part of good technology implementation is good project management. Therefore, many technology projects require good project management to be successful. Keep in mind that your best technologist may not be your best project manager — this is why using teams is often the best implementation strategy for anything beyond minor projects.

10. The single biggest threat to any technology project is political in nature. In the end, technology is the easy part. What’s difficult is the people part. That’s why your role, as library administrator, is the single most important role in any technology implementation. Are you willing to throw your political support behind it? Are you willing to invest the resources required to make it a success? If not, simply don’t bother. If yes, then welcome to what will likely be a successful project.

In Short we may say that Effective use of technology in libraries is too important to not get right.

By Abid Hussain