John Sharp, eHealth mentions his presentation on Web 2.0 and Healthcare to the Northern Ohio Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) in Cleveland.

The main themes to John's presentation are:

• What you need to know about Web 2.0
• Why you should worry about Web 2.0
• Why you should use Web 2.0

Because the hospital's network and security is IT's job they are going to come down on the conservative side of things. After all you aren't the one who will be getting paged at 2:30 in the morning if something bad happens. Our job as librarians is to connect people to information freely, and the some of the ways we connect or want to connect people to that information can be understandably scary for the IT people. They aren't the only ones who get freaky with the ideas of access to everything, information control by the masses, and perpetual beta....Just ask a cataloger about social bookmarking and tagging within "their" catalog.

Even though IT people are worried about some Web 2.0 applications, there are reasons to use them as John mentions. The trick is to do so without comprimising the hospital system's network or security. The trick is to come out somewhere in between. Where that is? I am not sure. I am not an IT person I don't know about all of their issues and concerns. However, the IT people are not librarians either, and they don't know or understand all of our issues and concerns.

This presentation is from perspective of the hospital IT people, the very people some of us librarians are trying to reach out to and collaborate with. (Or at the very least get on their email/call list when IP ranges change.) The IT people know about Web 2.0, some are proactive and some aren't. By looking through this presentation and others like it you begin to get some insights into their perspectives. You may not agree with everything, but you at least know a little bit more about what they are thinking. That way when you approach your IT person about chat ref, blogs, wikis, etc. you might be able to address some of their concerns and hopefully get their approval.

That is of course if you can actually get a hold of a friendly face within IT to build a work relationship with. It always seems that once we find "that person" they end up getting transfered to a different area in the hospital system or they leave for another IT company's greener pastures and we are left seeking out another victim...uh I mean friend to educate about the library's IT needs.

Labels: Social Software, Technology