Susan Perry (left) and Paul Dobosh plan how to provide printed and digital information to campus users through LITS, the newly restructured department they head.
Like four lanes of traffic merging on a fast-moving major highway, the MHC library, Electronic Services, the Language Resource Center, and Computing and Information Systems (CIS) mingled their staffs' duties this month. The major restructuring, which has been in the works since January, results in a new combined organization called Library, Information, and Technology Services (nicknamed "LITS"). The department's sixty-eight staff members are learning to combine technical and informational job functions in new ways. For instance, librarians are now helping to design World Wide Web pages, and computer specialists are helping faculty and librarians select academic software to enhance the library collection.
According to Susan Perry, College librarian and director of LITS, the work of staff in the library and CIS had overlapped more and more in recent years. As she told the faculty in January, "libraries and computing centers are going through the most dramatic revolution since scrolls became codices." The realms of printed and digital information draw closer together each month, and reorganization gave the groups a chance to "see if we could find a way to provide better service with the same number of people by being better organized."
For six months, the groups asked campus "clients" what their frustrations were under the current system and what services they needed most, looked at how other institutions handled these issues and what their organizational structures were, and designed a structure that more closely fit the needs of the College, according to Perry.
Perry's partner in running the joint organization is Paul Dobosh, senior information technology planner (formerly CIS director). Perry will concentrate on day-to-day management, while Dobosh's main responsibility is planning.
The new organization features some new names for its constituent parts (see accompanying article), but the overall goal is the same. "LITS facilitates the creative use of information and technology for Mount Holyoke College," reads the group's mission statement. "It supports the educational priorities of the College by providing instruction, materials, staff expertise, and equipment to sustain learning, teaching, and research and the College's administrative functions."
Perry says a major goal of restructuring is to provide better support for faculty and students. For example, more people will now be available at the help desks because everyone with suitable expertise--including LITS' top administrators--will take a turn answering questions. Another goal is to train student workers to help their peers in more technically sophisticated ways, an increasing need as student residence halls are networked. Additional goals for the next six months include: conducting a study of the Language Resource Center's future needs; working with the treasurer's office on restructuring purchasing and budgeting processes; continuing to develop the residential hall computer network; and adding information to the College's website.
The major divisions of LITS, with the major function and current head of each listed in parentheses, are:
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