Thu 10 Jan 2008
Send me your success (and failure) stories
Posted by Mark under Web 2.0
In an earlier post I presented some findings from the survey done by the Task Force on Social Networking Software. They found that many librarians are having access to various social networking web sites and applications blocked by their IT departments. I asked for some success stories on getting these sites unblocked, but I didn’t receive any. I’m asking again for you to send me not only success stories, but failure stories as well.
I’m working on an article that I hope to get published in a magazine that’s read by organization leaders. In it, I want to include examples or techniques that made TPTB unblock sites. If I could include horror stories of necessary access that was denied, that will also help. Please share.
8 Responses to “ Send me your success (and failure) stories ”
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January 10th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I don’t have social networking sites blocked at work - I have access to Facebook, Bloglines and MySpace (but don’t look at that at work). I work for a medical charity so it would be hard to block sites as so many people access us from so many walks of life. I do relate back the social networking sites to my job by linking to library blogs and organizations.
January 15th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
I have been very fortunate. After being blocked from many sites, including listservs, I did ALOT of work on my own time from home. Out of this came an article or two, plus I was able to research a topic to present at a conference and teach a consumer workshop representing my institution. As a result, my VP then backed me up and convinced IT to release the blocks. I can access Myspace, Google groups and Second Life but I am still blocked from google, yahoo or AOL email butI survive. I had to educate my Admins and IT dept about how library work has gone beyond just books, journals and databases but it was well worth the effort.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Our IT blocks streaming audio, video, sometimes blogs, never wikis in my experience, but many websites and discussion forums. They have a new filtering software to do this. For some sites, we get an Access Denied message. For others, we are given the policy on proper internet use and are given a chance to accept or reject going to the next page. Often I Accept to confirm that the site is work related and then am allowed to proceed. The site then gets allowed through the filter for me in future attempts to access. There is monitoring of such traffic, but as long as it is professional in nature it is not questioned. With Access Denied, we just need to contact IT to confirm that the site is work related and they have always allowed it after that. As for streaming media, though our fireweall does not allow it, if we need to view a CE course or other work application this way, pre-arrangements can be made to temporarily allow it on one’s desktop. Though at times annoying, I think this is a reasonable security measure that flexes with our needs. I have never yet hit a brick wall where I have not been able to get to where I need to be online. Not a failure or success story, but an account of what I think is a decent set up for a healthcare institution with major security needs.
January 16th, 2008 at 7:58 am
So far, I have been able to get to everything that I have wanted/needed except for the MLA list serv. I have contacted both ends, our IT department and MLA, with no success. It is strange because I can subscribe to other list servs and, at one time, I did subscribe to MLA.
January 16th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Mark and colleagues, Most social networking sites are blocked here. I can get to some blogs and wikis, although I do not have time to read more than the email from lists I already get. However, CDs will not run in our computers, FaceBook and YouTube, the MedlinePlus surgery videos will not play, we cannot get to any of the online classes at UCBerkeley, Baylor, MIT, etc., etc.
I believe this is more of a problem for hospital libraries than MLA understands. I was shocked by the survey results that seemed to indicate hospital libraries have Internet2, social networking access. That has not been the case with the hospital librarians I talk with.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:57 am
Shortly after I started a blog for nurses at my hospital, and got bloglines set up for reading library related stuff, we got Websense and all “social software” was blocked. Fortunately, I report to IS, and my boss had started inviting me to the IS staff meetings. Since the staff knew me, and what I was trying to accomplish, they unblocked my pc. I haven’t had a chance to work on my blog lately, but my next question is whether the nurses will be able to read it at work, or if each one needs to be individually unblocked.
January 30th, 2008 at 9:28 am
I spoke with you after the New Leaders Tea at MLA 2007 when you were discussing your vision for MLA. I expressed my frustration/concern that as a hospital librarian all Web 2.0 resources were blocked. I’ve been adamant in encouraging sections NOT to move listservs to blogs. My IT department was completely unwilling to allow access to these resources. I couldn’t even get to the Hospital Librarian’s Section New Wiki when it came up. Unfortunately for IT/Administration there feeling was that too much Web 2.0 resources are NOT professional. Even though there were some resources that were professional it wasn’t enough to warrant them opening that world up. Some nurse managers and others didn’t want nurses to even have email. While this seems ridiculous and creates problems for creating a Magnet environment those people could not move beyond the idea that email wastes time. Even patient education videos off of MedlinePlus were blocked and could not be viewed on the hospital campus. The solution for me was to move to academia but it doesn’t help the new librarian coming into the hospital I left. Maybe a study could be done on how Web 2.0 is used in business/healthcare. If we could prove that it is used for productive reason and not just to read stuff on Facebook then maybe we can convince administrations to see them as tools of work.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
In my case, we are completely free from any blocking. We even use YouTube as a tool to promote our videos. But, there are a lot of my colleagues here in our country that has so many stories regarding blocking of social networking sites and various Web 2.0 applications. IT Departments believe that these social networking sites are irrelevant for libraries and information centers. So sad that they have to know the importance of disseminating quality and qualified information.