DIY is for IT Guys

When asked to weigh the various pedagogical and learning objectives involved in experimenting with a pre-install virtual machine as opposed to building my own, I can look back on my own experience and say I have benefited from a combination of the two. I certainly learned a lot in IRLS 671 and IRLS 675 about the nuts-and-bolts of technology. I feel much more comfortable with working at the command line interface. I understand more about my wireless network at my home (although not well enough in some instances). I grasp the fundamentals of using virtual machines.

However, I still am not and probably never will become an “IT guy.” More importantly, I am thankful that I probably never be asked to fill the role of an IT guy. There are plenty of other folks in the IT industry who will probably find themselves migrating to the library and cultural heritage sectors in the future. As libraries and archives continue to evolve in the 21st century, they will inevitably adopt more technologies and undergo a rapid cycle of upgrading. I accept that. I feel relatively comfortable as an end-user of new software programs. I cannot say that I would ever feel comfortable installing and configuring sophisticated new software programs—like the virtual machines and content management software packages we have been experimenting with—in a production environment. In addition to lacking the technical skills, I think I also lack some necessary character traits—the resiliency to troubleshoot complex bugs or the determination to pour over system documentation.

On several of the practice installations of our IR systems, I had to sacrifice a lot of time troubleshooting the configurations and achieving basic functionality, instead of exploring the software features and refining my collection. For future iterations of IRLS 675 I would recommend limiting the number of virtual machine installs to one or two—perhaps Drupal and Omeka since they had the most modular plug-in applications and the installs were easier. Since EPrints and DSpace are the main contenders for most students’ final project platforms, I think students should be able to concentrate more on evaluating all the features of the systems as opposed to getting hung up on troubleshooting the installation and configuration. Personally, I have had to completely rule out using DSpace for my final project because I spent so much time troubleshooting and still didn’t get it right—even after I got it to work briefly once; I was never able to get it to work again. It’s unfortunate too, because many of my classmates feel it is the strongest IR software package.

Working from the per-installed VM was much easier than building my own VM. I experienced no serious problems with the Omeka install. The only problem I ran into was configuring the themes because of the version change.