What's the difference? Dataport vs. LAN

[intheflow]

Howdy! I'm a librarian with an uncooperative IT department. I'm hoping one of you DU computer geeks can help me out here.

I have a scanner/fax machine that is currently stationed somewhere very inconvenient to both patrons and staff. I want to move it to an area that has three working data ports but one is inoperable. The two working ports are in use (my computer & my assistant's computer). The data port looks like an old fashioned landline outlet, pictured below.

They (IT) tells me the scanner/fax can't be moved because we don't have enough working data ports. But couldn't we just get an adapter that has 2 outlets, changing our two-working data ports into three? I mean, maybe I'm missing the big picture, but this seems like an easy and cheap fix to the problem.

Am I missing something? Or is my IT department just a couple of idjits? (It's a two person department and I know one of them, the department manager, doesn't have any formal IT training. She was a library assistant when we got computers in the 1980s and she's been Peter Principled up the chain of command.)

Thanks in advance!