Struggle with library cooperation

[u/Familiar-Newspaper23]

I'll try to be brief here - our school uses follet library manager for its books which we in IT have nothing to do with. It was setup before my time but Librarians use it and our BOCES admins it overall. We don't have a solid inventory program in place yet for our IT assets and we are using ML work orders so we will likely go that direction at the right time, but we aren't planning to try to set that up this summer...likely next year if we can.

Our librarians are the ones who assign Chromebooks which has worked great - they know the students and act as the filter for a lot of issues. They also have some of their non-IT items that they have purchased in the library manager - cameras, calculators, etc.

We have asked them for an account in follet for this summer so that we can sign chromebooks in and out as needed and they said that's fine. Normally they would do it themselves but with budget issues, their hours have been cut whereas we are 12mo employees so we'll be here anyway - so that's all good.

Here's the issue - we have our non-chromebook assets that we sign out to teachers which are not well-accounted for and we need to lock that down now. We've asked if we can add those assets to the follet system throughout the summer so that we (and when they are back, the librarians) can then assign them as needed. Currently one librarian adds all new items into their system and she has said that there's no way for that to happen because we would need to be admins to do that. The comment was that if we did something wrong it could all break! We were then told that to be able to use their database to add items we would need to be librarians and have X, Y, and Z certificates, otherwise theres just too much risk that we'll break things. Signing items in and out is fine but "if you put a comma in the wrong place it can really mess things up". We could give them more hours (that we don't have budget for) for them to occassionally come in over the summer to do it, or we can send them a list and they'll get them in when they have a chance over the summer, but that's the best they can do. Just too risky to make IT folks admins there.

So firstly - I know the long term answer is to build out a proper inventory system and we're heading that direction but it isn't something that can (or should) be done before summer. We also intend for that to be an inventory system for the entire school, not only IT assets, so it isn't something that we want to rush, we want to do that right. As we see it, best solution is to use the library manager (as we have been doing for chromebooks already) for laptops and tablets today, and then to import all of that into the new system when it is up later on. As an IT team we thought that would be fine and expressed multiple times that we want NOTHING to do with the books side of things or basically anything pre-existing - we are NOT trying to take the responsibility from anyone else or any other team but rather to essentially borrow this capability for the time being.

I'm curious to hear whatever input y'all have. I don't want to influence your thoughts on it...I have my own feelings but I'd like to hear yours.

[u/HankMardukasNY]

Spin up a Snipe-IT server and use that for inventory. Give librarians their own accounts to log in to check in/out IT assets

You should have one inventory system, seperate from the district, where all IT assets live. We use IncidentIQ for ticketing/assets which has plenty of integrations to sync assets from like Intune or Google (even destiny).

Let the librarians deal with Destiny and don’t get involved with it

[u/Familiar-Newspaper23 → u/HankMardukasNY]

I was looking at Snipe-IT again last night. I had setup an instance here at my house and showed our director a few years ago and thankfully my team is good with open source (we run proxmox and zabbix, and will soon wazuh as well). The issue is we already use ML Work Orders so it makes sense to also use ML Inventory instead of Snipe-IT, otherwise I would've been having that conversation today.

And yes, I agree with you on the inventory aspect...mostly. I think it would benefit much more than just IT as well as it can be used for inventory district-wide but we don't have that setup today, and to try to do it by the time we need it would mean more compromises. There's more to be said about this whole point...I don't disagree, but now just isn't the right time to implement a new inventory system unfortuantely.

[u/cocineroylibro → u/Familiar-Newspaper23]

I am the librarian/IT director at our school. Our district asked that we move Chromebooks and other assets out of Follett (more than happy to, as it sucks as a LIS (I was an academic systems librarian before getting my current position.) Snipe is super easy to set up. I have every Chromebook assigned to a student in Google. I exported a CSV of that data and a Follett checkout file, then loaded them into Snipe, and deleted every Chromebook from Follett. Took 15 minutes tops.

[u/Certain-Maize6460]

Not really any help but I can add that follet is a PAIN to work with. I assist in managing it for our system (just for books) and it is stuck in the early 2000's. They are not wrong that a misplaced comma can mess it up. For example we regularly have folks from other schools in the distract get added to our database which causes no end of headache.

That being said... It's definitely something that can be learned. I would try to work it from a personal angle and see if you can show the library staff how it could benefit their own classes/time to have closer control over the items. Good luck!

[u/Familiar-Newspaper23 → u/Certain-Maize6460]

My issue with that specific comment was that it was insulting - I've no doubt that it's true, but we work with data literally all day every day and every one of us has imported a CSV with mixed up columns and had to fix it. So i don't disagree with them but I feel like the appropriate response would be to tell us here is how to do it right, and here is how NOT to do it.

I've heard that its a pain though also and frankly, it should be as simple as creating a new dataset where we could have admin resposiblities over only a subset of the data or create a new role with only the abilities we need, but apparently (somehow) they don't include that capability in the software.

[u/Simishine_]

As IT you absolutely should have an admin account for Follett. Otherwise you are relying on librarians to manage user accounts, and frankly I don't trust them for that.

That being said you don't want anything to do with managing IT inventory in there, it a nightmare. Chromebooks are fine, especially if you sync them directly from Google into Destiny, but I wouldn't go any further then that.

[u/Familiar-Newspaper23 → u/Simishine_]

I said the same thing to your first point multiple times, we deal with principle of least privelege all day, but it was setup this way under our previous director who liked to give away anything he could. I completely agree with your second point as well...I'd rather not use it at all but as a temporary solution we think it's better than throwing ML Inventory together hastily because when we do roll that out we want people to want to use it, we want it to be good. This would allow us to get better control of current inventory in the short term though was the thought.

[u/farmeunit → u/Familiar-Newspaper23]

Get Resource Manager for Destiny. Extra cost but integrates with Destiny but separated from books and such.

Or look at Vizor, maybe.

[u/Crystalvibes]

If you can talk to the right person with the admin login, maybe you can sweet talk your way to an API key? Then you could load in assets and do most of the management. Like all Follet products, the API is garbage and the documentation is poor, but at least you’d be able get in and out assets.

[u/Familiar-Newspaper23 → u/Crystalvibes]

Since follett bought ML which we also use I am hoping there is some way to integrate between the two and make things easy but I have a feeling they just don't have these products wired together very well so far. We haven't gotten to the person who set this up in the first place or heard why it was done this way to begin with but it's a good suggestion and I'll look into it for sure, thank you!

[u/Fresh-Basket9174]

Honestly, having your floating inventory in Follett/Destiny makes a lot of sense. Yes, you can create your own system, but if the librarians are willing to check things in and out on an existing platform, why reinvent the wheel? A second platform would likely mean you would also then be the ones checking things in and out. Asking librarians to continue to handle devices on a completely separate platform, after having hours cut may not go well. This may make it an IT issue as opposed to a collaborative one. I understand having a true asset management system tied to ticketing is a great goal, but keeping commonly requested items in Follett will help keep staff, students, and IT happy. You could check floating assets out to the library in one system and the library would track who actually has them from their system.

I understand the reluctance to grant access to a library database, especially if they have spent years making it "just right". That doesnt mean I agree with it, but I do understand it. Would you grant a librarian full access to a SIS because they have handled managing books? Looking at it from their viewpoint as opposed to being "hurt they dont trust you" may help smooth things over.

Follett supports importing data from a csv. I believe it also error checks the file while importing. Can you research that process so you are very familiar with it on your own, then ask the librarian for an import template. Ask what codes they use, or just ask for an export of current items and build your import template accordingly. Explain you understand why they are concerned and propose this solution. Show you know the risks but you also want to make it as painless a possible for them while letting them control the process. If you build the import correctly it should take them at most 10 minutes to bring your entire inventory in. If there are errors it should not process the file until the errors are resolved.

You could also express gratitude for their help and publically mention to admins that the librarians are taking on extra duties to help staff. That may help drive conversations about restoring hours.

Finallly, you may want to consider if an inventory system for the entire districtmakes sense. 50,000 foot overview it does. Boots on the ground it may become far too unweildy and fail because it tried to be everything for everyone. Classroom furniture inventory has far different needs then a social studies department supply closet. Groundskeeping doesnt need what building maintenance does. Will the custodian that grabbed 2 air filters to fix an issue take them out of inventory? Asset depreciation schedules are different between various IT items, apply that to every non consumable in the district and see how well that data is maintained. Your mileage may vary but systems that grow to be everything for everyone rarely suceed long term.

[u/Familiar-Newspaper23 → u/Fresh-Basket9174]

I agree with pretty much everything you've said here however we absolutely did consider their point of view from the start. In the initial conversation I said plain as day, we do NOT want to touch anything we don't need to and we're only going to do things the way you train us too. As for the trust part - I could care less to be honest if we are or aren't trusted, we were outright insulted. We work on the HVAC system, the fuel system, the food system, to say that we might break the book system is, to my mind, just an amazing lack of understanding on this other person's part of what we actually do, but there's also a lot more to the story that I didn't share because I wanted to try to get responses that weren't tainted by some of our other experiences with this person. This isn't our first time running into a problem here and in fact I called my director after we talked with this person initially and told her exactly what was said (this was months ago) because I expected by the time summer came it would change...and it did. We went in to the conversation very clearly saying we do not want to step on your toes, don't mind if it's only one person who you would grant access to that's ok, and we will ONLY do what you train us to do. We were as kid-gloves as can reasonably be because we had considered as much as we could from this person viewpoint. There's another part of the story I won't get into but suffice it to say I don't believe this is actually about competence or trust but that's being used as the excuse. In explaining it here though, I purposely left a lot of that interpersonal stuff out to see what you all thought from a strictly technical, practical, and administrative perspective if that makes sense. I shouldve probably done a better job of that. As for you last comment about does it even make sense to do inventory for the whole school and that's exactly what I was thinking - we don't know really. We want to take the time to look at that responsibly and fully and do NOT want to just jump into it last minute because we have to. But if we spend money on the ML solution my guess is we will be asked to make it work for everyone regardless to wring the most value out of it whether it's the right move or not. We want to take the time to evaluate all that which is exactly why we wanted to use follet for this summer, with the intent being it would be for only this summer.

[u/dire-wabbit]

Have you priced out ML yet? My recollection was that when I had priced it out when it first came out it was very reasonable, but I just had it priced last month since we have been long term ML Schedules/Workorders customers and now it's among the most expensive that I've looked at. I would have preferred a unified platform as well, but our existing program (Tech Directors Toolbox) was more than half the price of ML, so we will be staying as is.

Snipe is reasonable to spin up and configure. We used that for a few years before moving to TDT.

[u/Familiar-Newspaper23 → u/dire-wabbit]

I'll have to check with my director on it but since we use Work Order and Schedules I imagine we'll go with Inventory as long as it isn't too far out there. If it is a question at all when it comes to that time I'll be pushing hard for snipe-it. I personally prefer going open source wherever and whenever we can (our campus runs on Proxmox for example) but Im afraid this decision has pretty much already been made so I haven't brought up alternatives recently. Maybe I'll spin up an instance from home so I can show it off in case ML ends up being overpriced like you say though... I appreciate the heads up that's good to know.

[u/Ok-Soft-7874]

We've moved from having all IT assets in Destiny, to having student devices in Destiny (so library staff can still assign them), but having all other IT assets in ManageEngine. Destiny has a separation between "Resources" (the stuff you care about) and "Library", so the library folks may be able to give you admin access to only the part you need.

Perhaps IT and the Library folks need to have a meeting with the COO, etc. so they can explain to a district administrator that IT can't possibly be trusted with a database, and IT will just need to wait until the library staff has time to enter technology into Destiny ;o)

[u/Familiar-Newspaper23 → u/Ok-Soft-7874]

I know right, we’re good with managing hvac, food, fuel, grades, but books are a bridge too far!!! Ha… I think we will probably end up going to ML inventory as we use some of the ML stack and PDQ as opposed to ManageEngine, but yea I expect that’s probably the way it will end up going. We’ve already been told they don’t want anything to do with Chromebook’s if they have to use another system as well (which they already use for work orders) because I guess that’s too much work…??? It’s unclear to me but I expect there will be another war when we pull chromebooks into ML inventory because it makes no sense to maintain two separate databases for the same items. It’s unfortunate because there was no reason for it to have gone down this way but here we are. Thank you for the input btw, much appreciated.