This week’s question relates to a topic that may have increasing bearing on our library community: the tech “buy-in.” As technology solutions become easier for library staff to directly implement, I think we could face resistance toward our home-grown solutions from our IT departments.

At least that’s the roadblock member amberdevo seems to be facing with an intern-developed RSS implementation. They have a technology solution and need advice to help them get it to the live stage:

“Our IT dept keeps putting off (since August 07) in setting it up so it can be used. “Security risk — we’re looking at it — we need to have the code verified, blah blah blah” We don’t know what the security risks are, have never been told. Could someone perhaps enlighten me on what the possible security risks may be and how to set things up so there is no security risk.“

I’m guessing that some in our community have dealt with similar issues and may have best practices, or at least war stories, worth sharing. Don’t be shy! If you have any tips, tricks, or horror stories about convincing an IT department to move forward with RSS—this really this applies to any new technology— please post here as a comment or in the discussion forum thread.

And as always, if you’ve got a question you want to ask the WebJunction community or you see a good question coming in, please post it in the Question of the Week topic.