IST Help Desk Moving to Van Houten Library, Forensics Lab Gets Former Spot

NJIT's Information Services and Technology help desk is relocating to Van Houten Library, which should give users a more constructive experience.

The move is happening in the next few weeks, mutually motivated by IST's desire for a prominent, more modern facility and the library's role as a 21st-century technology hub.

Kamalika Sandell, vice provost and chief information officer for the university, explained that the change is part of a broader maturity of campus information technology services. She is keenly aware that most people only know her department through the help desk, so she brought first-level help services back onto campus, adopted the ServiceNow application and expanded after-hours support, which all help to improve response times and quality.

"The mission of support and access is core to IST, it is embedded in our division’s name and it is cohesive with the library’s mission to establish its identity as the digital commons. The central library location will allow us to do outreach and engagement beyond what we had been able to do from the older ServiceDesk location at the Student Mall," Sandell said.

Being closer to the Guttenberg Information Technologies Center will also help her cause, as that's where her own office and the rest of the Information Services and Technology department is based, along with related organizations such as Media & Technology Support Services along with Ying Wu College of Computing.

The help desk's current space, in the student mall underneath the Summit Street parking deck, will be used for a forensic science laboratory, managed by the Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science.

Further improvements are coming in the near future, Sandell and University Librarian Ann Hoang noted. The new help desk will offer a laptop loaner service for students facing financial challenges. The library is also renovating a computer laboratory into an Information Training Laboratory, largely for teaching new students, because NJIT's online resources and databases dwarf those of most high schools. Sandell wants to improve information technology processes throughout the university, such as automating processes which are now manual and making it easier to locate things on university websites.

Hoang is also advocating for more open-source electronic textbooks, known as open educational resources within the field. That project began modestly two years ago. Faculty who accepted NJIT sabbatical grants to produce such materials include professors John Carpinelli, Rachel Rongfang Liu and Rajpal Sodhi, all with Newark College of Engineering, plus Shahriar Afkhami who holds dual appointments in Mathematical Sciences and the Department of Data Science. Ying Wu College of Computing's Ryan Tolboom is also producing a toolkit for his open-source book, with a grant through the U.S. Department of Education's Open Textbook Collaborative Project, managed locally by Middlesex College.