I have been with the St. Louis County Library for nearly eight years. Turns out I didn't need my English degree here in IT, but my love of communication and information has made this job a perfect fit. I'm really impressed by how our library staff as a whole hit the ground running with the adoption of Google Apps, and I'm excited about how our department in particular has been collaborating and communicating within our group and with the entire library system.

After moving our staff to Gmail, we quickly realized a need to communicate the structure of staff users and groups. We built a Google Site to provide an internal location where any staff member can look up who's who in any of our nearly 100 distribution groups, as well as request display name changes and group additions/removals.

Right away, we began using Google Docs to keep pace with our library hardware and software. Spreadsheets and forms shared within our IT department make keeping track of inventory a breeze -- without the expense of a separate third party software. Another spreadsheet lets Service Desk techs know at a glance which library branch computers have most recently been updated and with what software; this allows us to focus quickly on parts of a branch or parts of the system that need our attention. We are so up-to-date, in fact, that one customer reported that the computer he was using had a Java installation more up to date than the site he wanted to visit could handle!

By using Google Apps in a variety of large and small ways, we're solving everyday business problems for library staff and customers quickly and easily -- and that has made me even more passionate about being in IT, and working in a role where I have the opportunity to serve the patrons of Missouri's busiest library: ours.