Vocational

Working Within a Hierarchy

The Lincoln’s Challenge project placed our group in the position of working within a hierarchy under more experienced computer technicians. Essentially; we were not the “experts.” Though this situation is somewhat unique within the context of LIS 451, where students often served communities in which their skills stood as the greatest technical expertise, our project offered us the valuable opportunity of collaborating with IT staff in a situation, perhaps, closer in resemblance to the average professional experience. Don and Art presented us with a certain level of autonomy. We did for instance, largely design the infrastructure of the lab. Our input was heard, valued, and oftentimes implemented. Yet, ultimately, the final decision always rested in Art’s hands and we quickly learned to run all decision by Art prior to implementation. Our group members were forced to navigate the occasionally contradictory goals and instructions given by the two primary technicians, either choosing one plan over another or coming to some sort of compromise. Though well-informed and familiar with networking, it is likely, that many librarians entering the profession will not be as knowledgeable as established IT. Therefore, the process of collaborating with superiors to complete the required tasks presents a dynamic inextricable from nearly any workplace.

Working Under Restrictions

The IT staff at Lincoln’s challenge presented us with a much greater degree of specification on what exactly needed to be put into operation at the lab. In other situations, site managers may describe certain tasks or goals for the organization. Art provided our group with a strict set of uses for the machines. Students were only to use a specific set of software. Additionally, the structure of the lab was restricted due to unique security guidelines for a facility of its nature. The structure of chairs, desks, and workstations as well as the physical containment of wiring and cabling posed challenges to infrastructure set-up. Lincoln’s challenge, as a not-for-profit organization, operated under certain budgetary limitations also. Oftentimes our group faced delays or a change of plans because funding was not available for more effective alternatives. Many of our software issues arose out of the inability to purchase upgrades and the subsequent struggle to run a Windows 98 program on XP operating systems. This last situation represents the sort of impediments nearly any project faces, those unexpected factors which can force a complete redirection, or at the very least a reassessment of the existing plan. In that specific case, Art opted not to image the hard drives with that software installed, instead duplicating only the operating system onto each machine. Ultimately, these various restrictions caused our group to reconcile the reality of the site and the organization with the ideal of our original plan. We faced delays, entire aspects of the project had to be reassessed and sometimes discarded, adjustments had to be made according to the needs of the organization and the end users. Effective project management involves not only good initial planning, but also re-planning during the process, and the ability to constantly adjust goals and expectations.

Communication

Extensive and timely communication between group members proved a necessity during the course of the Lincoln’s Challenge project. Working with a large group often involved a division of labor in which smaller components of the larger group worked on different days of the week. In order to foster essential continuity, to avoid repetition or conflict of tasks, and to lessen over all confusion, group members provided a summary of each day’s achievements and issues in our daily log as well as communicating via email, phone, and the group Moodle space. Though we encountered some inevitable disconnect, this aspect of the experience reinforced the importance of exchanging ideas, concerns, and information in a working environment, so that all involved remained informed and conscious of the project’s progression. Nearly every occupation involves a certain degree of collaboration, particularly in the LIS field. The need for constant and thorough communication throughout the course of this project both mirrored and provided a concrete example of just such a relationship.

Technical

Infrastructure

Electrical

The wiring of the Lincoln’s challenge lab entailed a complex arrangement of power-strips and extension cords to accommodate the existing electrical infrastructure of the room, which had previously supported only thirty computers. This procedure required some pre-planning to determine the current of the outlets and where extension cords would be needed. A great deal of trial and error, testing until a fuse was blown and readjusting appropriately.

Cable

From a technical perspective, perhaps the most challenging, and certainly the most time-consuming aspect of the project proved to be issues with infrastructure. Connecting sixty computers to a series of hubs and a server is not as easy as it sounds. We learned the essentials of diagnostic evaluation of cabling infrastructure, assessing the functionality of cables through link lights and cable testers. During the construction process, we received a crash course in making cables, the arrangement of wires within the casing and proper insertion into the connector. The group realized the importance of a thorough diagram. Mapping out the lengths and positions of cables required a high degree of preparation and was essential to gauging how much of the previous lab’s cable infrastructure could be utilized and determining the location of hubs. Effective troubleshooting also required systematic numbering of each cable. The security concerns of the Lincoln’s Challenge organization mandated that we, as much as possible, conceal the physical infrastructure as well. Cabling was contained in tin conduits running along the floor, protective casing, and PVC pipes. Velcro was used to create secure bundles. The security process required precise measurements of cables and construction of a stable conduits. Ultimately, the extensive time spent on this aspect of the project reinforced that network layout and design of the lab remains just as significant, if not more so, as any hardware issues.

Hard Drives

Using the program Disc Commander, the group installed operating systems on the machines in a process called duping. One of our initial projects involved removing all sixty hard drives from each machine and cataloging them for the organization. Once Art installed Windows XP on one initial hard drive, we used Disc Commander to write the contents of that hard drive on to several others, creating a group of (16) hard drives that were used to overwrite the remainder of the lab’s hard drives. Throughout this procedure, the group removed, shuffled around, and reassembled the lab’s hard drives, as well as performing diagnostics on troublesome hard drives in cases where the duping process failed. We learned that not all hard drives are created equal. The heartier Western Digital brand of hard drives experienced no problems and were used as the base group for duplication. The Maxtor brand hard drives experienced several malfunctions. While similar to imaging, the duplication process proved a new experience and an alternative method for installing operating systems and software to large scale labs. Overall, the process went fairly smoothly and our group gained some experience with a previously unfamiliar method. Additionally, the disparity of performance across brands emphasized the importance of choosing capable hardware during network planning and set-up.