Archive for September, 2008
September 19th, 2008 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Elin Waagen
Electronic Reserves
Thanks to the effort of three cataloguers, Sue Driscoll, Marlena Evans, and Kristen Geoghegan, the mountain of ERes documents added at the beginning of the semester was accomplished with great speed. The workflow in Reserves was still hectic, but much more manageable. Thanks also to Michael Warner for initiating the collaboration!
Apples and Study Carrels for Seniors
* The first student arrived at the Main Library at 5:25 am
* 67 students were waiting outside when the door opened at 7:30 am
* A crate of apples helped ease the pain of the long wait
* 83 carrels were assigned by 8:33 am
* All but 40 carrels (out of 202) were assigned by late morning
Thanks to Maura and Steve for ensuring a smooth event and to the staff and student staff who came to work early to help process carrel requests.
Welcome back to Karin Gottshall!
Karin has re-joined Circulation Services as an on-call staff member, filling in for staff at Circulation and Reserves when and where needed.
Shelf Shift at Main
A major redistribution of books on the upper level is underway by Rich Church and his team of student workers. There may be some intermittent noise – we will try to minimize this as much as possible. Please let us know if you encounter complaints. Please alert users to possible location changes when referring them to shelves on the upper level.
September 19th, 2008 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Howie McCausland
We have completed an extensive rewiring and upgrade to the network serving the Youngman Football Stadium press box (that odd-shaped little house at the top of the stadium seating), providing higher bandwidth wired connections (for better webcasting and streaming video of the games) and wireless service. We have begun a project to extend TelJet-based fiber broadband network service to the Snow Bowl, running fiber from the existing network at Bread Loaf. This will provide the Bowl with the same network services available on main campus, a vast improvement over their current Spartan conditions. We hope (with fingers tightly crossed!) to have this completed before the start of this winter’s ski season.
September 18th, 2008 by Michael Roy
via Elin Waagen
This quarter’s issue of “Reference & User Services Quarterly” features a guest post entitled “Taming Technolust: Ten Steps for Planning in a 2.0 World” that the editor of the journal — M. Kathleen Kern– introduces with the following:
“This quarter, Michael Stephens of the popular Tame the Web blog offers advice on dodging “technolust” and how to recognize and deal with “technodivorce.” It isn’t all avoidance, though, as he provides ten positive steps for your library’s technology planning. Michael has a pedigree in technology planning as the former Special Projects Librarian at Saint Joseph County (Ind.) Public Library. He now teaches in the LIS program at Dominican University and recently authored two Technology Reports on Web 2.0 for the American Library Association. If you’ve heard Michael speak, you will recognize his straight-from-the-hip style. ”
It’s an interesting diatribe, and one worthy of further discussion. (Hint hint… use the comments!)
September 12th, 2008 by Doreen Bernier
 In front of Scholars Rock, Dean Mike Roy, Barbara Youngman, Robert Youngman and Professor Colin Mackenzie
Submitted by Joseph Watson
For more than a year we have been working with the Museum of Art to select a location for a large “Scholar’s Rock” that the museum wanted to place in the Main Library. Happily, the rock was placed the the East Reading Room on the Upper Level last week. The existing ledge on the interior wall was redesigned by Ken Pohlman of the museum and reconstructed by Stark Mountain Woodcrafters. The resulting pediment enhances the room and presents the rock beautifully. The piece was given to the museum by Robert P. ‘64 and Barbara P. Youngman who have given generously over the years to encourage the study and collection of Asian art. In the rocks’ descriptive label Prof. Colin Mackenzie writes “Appreciated for their contorted shapes and fissured surfaces, ornamental rocks have been collected in China since the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.). Small rocks were displayed on scholars’ desks, while the largest ones were incorporated into gardens. They thus played an ornamental role analogous to that of figural sculpture in the West. The connoisseurship of rocks was intimately bound up with philosophical notions of transformation and concepts such as yin (negative) and yang (positive), and xu (emptiness) and shi (solidity). Rocks from Lingbi are prized for their fantastic forms.”
The Youngmans recently stopped by the library to view the stone and Mike had a chance to thank them for their generosity.
And speaking of art in general, the Museum has been adding and removing objects all summer. The revised list of art in the building is available in a brochure at the Info Desk and will also be available on the web soon. Also on the web: http://www.middlebury.edu/arts/capp/mural/mural.htm and http://www.middlebury.edu/arts/capp/exhibits/
And remember, temporary displays of art (or whatever) can be set up in the Main Lib. For more information on what’s available see go/lis?display.
And on an unrelated note– Announcing a new section of the LIS Wikis devoted to Facilities Concerns: The content is fairly brief at this point, but will expand over time. If you have topics that you think would be useful to have included please let me know. Check it out at go/wikis and select LIS then LIS Facility Issues. The best part is, it’s searchable!
September 12th, 2008 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Joe Antonioli
This summer, the Digital Media Tutors took on numerous projects, more than three times what had been proposed in the past. The following tallies do not include the walk-in Language School assistance.
Number of proposed projects – 90
Number completed or being supported this fall – 84
Faculty and staff we worked with (not including research or staff assistants) – 64
Images scanned with metadata – ~1400
Videoclips – 32
Original video – 8
Blogs created and designed – 16
Segue sites, created and re-imagined – 11
3D projects – 7
Wikis – 2
Maps – 2
Formal one-on-one instruction sessions – 17
FYSE assignments – 13
Other class assignments – 3
Some of these projects will continue this fall, as the DMTs who worked with faculty during the summer will now support the First Year Seminar classes taught by those professors. For samples of their work and activities, go to http://blogs.middlebury.edu/dmts/ and http://blogs.middlebury.edu/virtualmidd/.
Thank you to Brett Wilhelm for setting up the development environment for WordPress MU, allowing us to test plugins before bringing them to the production environment.
Recently, three more plugins have been added. Private Only allows the owner of a blog to require a login for anyone to view their blog. WP-Stats will allow a blog owner to view user activity on their blog. Ian McBride recommended and tested cForms, a plugin that allows a blog owner to create and embed forms in their blog, and have the submissions sent to the owner via email.
A plugin must be activated so that it can be used on your Middlebury blog. To do this, got to the PLUGINS page (the link is in the upper right-hand side) and click on the Activate link.
If you would like your blog listed on MiddBlogs, please email Joe at jantonio@middlebury.edu.
September 12th, 2008 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Peter Liu, MIIS Library Director
For many years, the Institute’s more than 2,000 VHS video collection has not been included in the library’s Online Public Access Catalog or OPAC until recently. As a part of the MIIS and MIDD libraries’ integration process, a joint project of MIIS A/V collection enhancement to support instruction was launched during this summer. The primary purpose of the project is to convert the existing A/V Center VHS video data of Microsoft Excel into a set of the library MAchine Readable Cataloging records or often known as the MARC standards. The project intended to leverage Middlebury cataloging expertise, make a full use of the recent updated Millennium server’s capacities, preserve all useful data and present in a simple and web searchable format. After several months of hard work of librarians on both MIIS and MIDD campuses, especially through timely guidance and collaborations with Terry Simpkins and his talent cataloging staff at Middlebury, the MIIS library’s OPAC (http://monti.miis.edu) is now containing more than 2,000 VHS videocassettes from the A/V Center. As a result, MIIS faculty and students are now able to find, identify, select, and obtain A/V materials just like they search any printing books and periodicals. The project has greatly enhanced the usability of A/V collection on and beyond campus. A portion of the regularly purchased A/V materials of documentary videos, performances, performance art, and feature films will be adding into our library holdings on the largest union catalog of the OCLC’s WorldCat. Those A/V materials can be checked out at A/V Center for one day or 24 hours as usual. They will not be lent to other libraries except to Middlebury through interlibrary loan in the near future.
Copyright note:
The video cassettes and other A/V materials in the library are subject to the Revised Copyright Act of 1976, Title 17 of the U.S. Code, Sections 101-810, which took effect on January 1, 1978. The library prohibits the use of these materials in any way that violates Federal or State laws.
September 12th, 2008 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Mary Backus
I am very pleased to announce that Jim Beauchemin has accepted the position of User Support and Services Manager.
Jim comes to us from GE Healthcare where he has been a Principal Systems Software Consultant and a Lead Systems Software Consultant. Jim brings both management experience and a strong technical background to this position. He earned a Bachelors of Science degree in Computer Information Systems and a Masters of Science in Managing Innovation and Information Technology from Champlain College. Jim lives in Vergennes, and will join our team on October 6th.
I am looking forward to having him on the team, and the contributions that I am confident he will bring.
September 6th, 2008 by Michael Roy
The folks at Nature Magazine just published a special issue called ‘Big Data’. Within that issue is an interesting article entitled ‘Big Data: The next Google’. Here is their introduction to that article:
What will happen in the next 10 years?
“Ten years ago this month, Google’s first employee turned up at the garage where the search engine was originally housed. What technology at a similar early stage today will have changed our world as much by 2018? Nature asked some researchers and business people to speculate — or lay out their wares. Their responses are wide ranging, but one common theme emerges: the integration of the worlds of matter and information, whether it be by the blurring of boundaries between online and real environments, touchy-feely feedback from a phone or chromosomes tucked away on databases.”
Thanks to Shel Sax for the tip!
September 6th, 2008 by Doreen Bernier
September 6th, 2008 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Amy Hoffman and Nate Burt
Tickets opened and resolved by our group since the first of June: 2362
Top 5 Categories:
1. Passwords and PINs (including the BIG password reset day)
2. Application support ( Mostly Outlook and INB)
3. Equipment issue ( Computers and Printers)
4. Network Issues (Connectivity and Registration)
5. Account Management (Permissions, SPAM control, quotas)
This week we get to play Santa Claus. New students who have qualified for financial aid funded laptops have been coming in to pick them up. They are so grateful and appreciative. This is our favorite part of start up!
Check out our new WIKI . Let us know what else you would like to see there!
September 6th, 2008 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Peggy Fischel
The heavy rain in early August washed out the road to Burdick House at the Bread Loaf campus in Ripton. Burdick was home to some BL School of English summer faculty. Our telephone system contractor, Jim Fitzgerald, was called out to repair the telephone line in the house, but as the attached photos indicate, the road was not drivable. Intrepid Jim walked the 1/2 mile in to repair the phone connection.
In late July we installed an upgrade to our enhanced 911 notification system. Thanks to Rick James for his assistance in setting up the new server and applications. With this new equipment, we are using four dedicated circuits from existing PRI lines to send calls. This allows us to remove the FairPoint special service trunks and PS/ALI service at a savings of $7700 per year which will pay for the new system in less than two years.
In August several AlertFind administrators from the President’s staff were given a tutorial on the recently upgraded message composition features. Documentation was re-written in the form of a quick reference guide to aid administrators if/when they need to send an emergency campus notification.
September 6th, 2008 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Alex Chapin
Segue v2 went into production at Middlebury on August 18. Since then over 100 sites have been created in the new version (see: Segue Usage). To help people learn how to use Segue v2 we have made a number of screencast videos that demonstrate basic features and have been offering introductory workshops.
iPods were popular again this summer with the Language Schools. Jin Zhang of the Chinese School had her students produce weekly podcasts. A number of classes required students to complete weekly audio recording assignments. More language resources were reformatted for use on iPods and other mobile devices. For more details, see the iPods and 2nd Language Acquisition site.
Many students have been using Measure to take placement exams online. Measure is heavily used by the Language Schools for entrance and exit exams. Some academic year departments have also begun using it to place students in courses for the fall and spring semesters.
September 6th, 2008 by Michael Roy
As a follow-up to last week’s LIS staff meeting where we talked about a process for arriving at a new organizational structure for LIS, I am sending along links to:
1. the draft outline of the plan
and
2. the interim organizational chart that is in place while we go through the longer-term reorganization
We are in the process of putting together materials for learning about how to do a SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analysis, as well as a means for sharing other useful materials (org charts from other schools, articles about managing teams, etc.) Stay tuned!
|
Orientation 2008, Wednesday, September 3rd. For additional photos, go to O:\ORGS\LIS\Circulation Services\Images\Orientation 08
