Earlier this week, I was contacted seperately by a faculty member and an IT guy about the same issue. The teacher’s department had bought access to a database. Thus far registration had been complicated for the students and the teacher was anxious to streamline the process. He apparently contacted the IT guy directly and IT guy had worked out how to allow registrations through our proxy-server. So all the students had to do was click on a link, if they were off-campus login to the proxy-server, and register.

This is the point they came to me, wanting me to put the link someplace on the library website because all the links to databases are there. The problem was that the contract restricted access to just students taking certain classes. Putting it on the llibrary’s site would give access to all the students, faculty and staff.

I remembered that the university used web-based course software for even the on-campus classes, so I advised the teacher to put the link there. He was thrilled by the idea that put it where the students could get to it easily and satisfied the terms of the contract.

I was struck by the fact I was getting credit for doing essentially nothing. A couple of emails and a phone call and it was settled. I was the middle man. My contribution came from my understanding of how the IT guy’s technology worked, how the contract worked and how the teacher taught his classes.

Until now I’ve had an overall negative opinion of middle men, formed by library vendors who seem to have forgotten the part about understanding how we work and what we need to do and publishers who keep hiking prices for very little added value. But I’ve been reminded that good middle men really can be tremendously helpful. Now if only we could find some.