Condemned to repeat history: lessons I'm still learning

ABSTRACT

It sometimes seems like the trials and tribulations (and, once in a while, triumphs) we face in our jobs are a direct result of change. And while a new worm, a new version of an operating system, a new demand for us to provide some service that we've never provided before, continue to challenge us. However, even in the face of these changes, I think there are some principles that have remained relatively constant over the past decade or so. <ul><li>We are still service providers, responsible to the consumers in our campus communities for meeting their needs appropriately.</li><li>We still have a teaching role to fill. Again, what we need to teach might have changed. (Or maybe not?) There is still an important niche for us as educators on our campuses.</li><li>We still have to strike a balance: do we exercise complete control, or do we allow complete autonomy? Each of our organizations has to find its proper location on that spectrum.</li></ul>

In my presentation, I will illustrate each of these points with examples from the past and present, and I hope my listeners will be encouraged to contribute some of their own examples (or counterexamples) during the discussion period. Hopefully, by thinking a little bit about our history, we will not be condemned to re-learn old lessons.

REFERENCES

• 1: Bev Bisenius, Implementing a help desk at a small liberal arts college, Proceedings of the 20th annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User services, p.37-41, December 1992, Cleveland, Ohio, United States [doi>10.1145/143164.143188]
• 2: BLACK, RON ET AL. 2004. Email with subject Zen Works to Educause CIO mailing list, with succeeding replies and discussion by various authors. Retrieved June 1, 2004 from http://listserv.educause.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0404&L=cio&T=0&F=&S=&P=3812.
• 3: THE CARNEGIE FOUNDATION. The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Retrieved June 1, 2004 from http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/Classification/.
• 4: Kathleen Cummings, Reinventing support services: transcending the centralized-decentralized support model debate, Proceedings of the 30th annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User services, p.232-233, November 20-23, 2002, Providence, Rhode Island, USA [doi>10.1145/588646.588703]
• 5: Christopher Jones, How long can we keep doing more with less?, Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User services, p.125-128, October 10-13, 2004, Baltimore, MD, USA [doi>10.1145/1027802.1027833]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.0 General

General Terms:
Management

Keywords:
centralization, change, historical perspective, service standards, teaching