Jan - I understand your frustration - I feel it and have the same issues in our District (which is huge with nearly 100 schools and 80,000 students). With some persistence and the promise of moderating comments & posts, we've been able to get access to edublogs (and only edublogs) in my District. The beauty of this is that you can add images, videos, etc. to the blogs - so I can use some of these tools together (are we mashing here?) with the kids.

I'd say if you can produce a sample of what you want to accomplish and show the Board and your IT guys the value to student learning, then you might get more access. Unfortunately in our world today, security of the system is paramount. Even if you can't access all the Web 2.0 tools at school, you can still work with some of the components and help kids understand how they can be used... hang in there... do what you can. You said at the beginning of your post that you look to see how these tools can help you do your job and that's the way to go at it - eventually you may be able to do more.

Another issue that I face, and perhaps other school librarians is to convince or to circumvent school administrators of the value of Web 2.0 tools. Is the bandwagon effect the only means to get not only teachers on board but also administrators too?