Archive for the ‘Academic Consulting Services’ CategoryPreview of Next Version of Shadowbox ThemeNovember 18th, 2009 by Alex ChapinI attended part of the LIS website team meeting today and gave a presentation of the ShadowBox theme and some of the new features that will be available in the next version including updates to author pages, more custom header options and most importantly, higher contrast text in comment fields. I also gave a preview of some new ShadowBox variations based on the new college website design. Below is a screencast from that meeting:
Towards a Unified Curricular Technology UXNovember 16th, 2009 by Alex ChapinI recently created a version of the ShadowBox theme for Measure, an instance of Moodle used at Middlebury for online assessments. As a starting point, I used the Anomaly Theme Pack, created by the Patrick Malley, the Themes Manager for Moodle.org and the Creative Director of the NewSchool Learning design shop. I merged some of the styles and markup Patrick had developed with code from the WordPress ShadowBox theme to create a similar look and feel to the WordPress version. This is a great example of the power of open source to build upon and synthesize the work of others (much of this theme designers current work in no longer open source…)
The goal is to create a more unified user experience (UX) and make it easy for faculty and students to move from one platform to another. You’ll noticed that Measure has links to WordPress and Segue in the upper right corner. These same links can be put in the same place on WordPress blogs that use ShadowBox. I’d also like to put these same links on all Segue sites to help with the transition away from Segue to other platforms.
For more information about Measure, see the Measure Blog. Seminar for Academic ProfessionalsNovember 13th, 2009 by Alex ChapinAs libraries and technology services merge, librarians and technologists also need to merge, at least what they know. Mike Roy and David Wedaman (Brandeis) have organized a seminar whose objective is to develop a curriculum for academic information professionals. Librarians and technologists from Middlebury, Brandeis and Mount Holyoke are currently defining that curriculum through a series of presentations that make up the MBMH Seminar. Joy Pile and I, along with Chrissa Godbout from Mount Holyoke and Karrie Peterson from Brandeis gave the first presentation of the seminar on “Blending Education and Entertainment” in late October. A summary of the presentation is posted on the MBMH Seminar blog and slides are available from Google Docs. Bryan Carson along with Mary Glackin from Mount Holyoke, gave a presentation this afternoon on the topic of “Do Students Learn Differently?” ShadowBox Theme Introductory ScreencastNovember 3rd, 2009 by Alex ChapinI made a ShadowBox theme introductory screencast during a presentation of the theme to Academic Consulting Services. This screencast describes some of the WordPress UI challenges I was trying to solve with this theme. The first was finding a consistent way to display the log in link and information about a given user’s role on a blog. I also wanted to create a UI for setting theme colors and layout and other options. Finally I wanted to more consistently map some of the blog editing UI onto the blog itself so people could more easily add new posts or edit existing posts. (click on the Am working on a new release of ShadowBox that includes the display of category and tag RSS links, custom author pages and more header options. For more information, see ShadowBox Changelog. Contact me know if you would like to see a preview of this new version. Cataloging Project Completed for the Bailey Collection of Vermont PamphletsOctober 29th, 2009 by Hans Raum
Horace Ward Bailey was a native Vermonter who served the state in many capacities, from state Senator and U. S. Marshall to State Railroad Commissioner and member of the Champlain Tercentenary Commission, but he may well be best remembered for his collection of Vermont pamphlets, which “was one of the most complete in the country and included some of the rarest known specimens of the early days of the history of the State,” according to a memorial volume written by his friends. After Mr. Bailey’s death in 1914, his collection of Vermont pamphlets was purchased from his estate for the library at Middlebury College. For many decades this collection of 130 bound volumes of pamphlets had a paper index, but was otherwise uncataloged and unused. Thanks to a recently completed ten-year project by the Catalog Department, the pamphlets have been cataloged, and the most unique and interesting pamphlets are being digitized as well. The earliest pamphlet in the collection dates back to 1794 and other pamphlets date from the very early 1800’s to Bailey’s death in 1914 and cover a broad range of topics, from town histories to railroad annual reports and a report on the Dred Scott decision on slavery. As we celebrate the quadricentennial of the discovery of Lake Champlain by Samuel de Champlain in 1609, it is worth noting that there is an extensive collection of materials on the Lake Champlain and Hudson River Tercentenary among the Bailey Pamphlets. All of the cataloged pamphlets (well over 900) can be found in Midcat by doing a title search on Bailey’s Collection of Vermont Pamphlets. The pamphlets are shelved in the locked portion of the Vermont Collection, which is in Special Collections. Many thanks go to the staff of the Catalog Department for their hard work and tenacity in completing this ambitious project. Data.govOctober 14th, 2009 by Hans RaumData.gov is a government website launched earlier this year to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Data.gov provides access to data in three ways: through the “raw” data catalog, the tool catalog and the geodata catalog. Data.gov helps users to find, access, and download non-sensitive Government data and tools in a variety of formats. Some of the many topics covered include the following: births, deaths, marriages and divorces; energy and utilities; geography and the environment; health and nutrition; income, expenditures, poverty and wealth; labor force, employment and earnings; natural resources, population, prices; social and human services; and transportation. These datasets are potentially useful to students in a broad range of majors in the sciences and social sciences and potential uses as additional datasets are added. http://data.gov LISterine Workshop: CaptureSeptember 14th, 2009 by Carrie MacfarlanePosted by Bryan Carson and Carrie Macfarlane The next LISterine Workshop (LIS Technology, Endeavors, and Resources in Need of Explanation) has been scheduled. On Thursday, September 17, from 12:30-1:30 pm in Library 145, Alex Chapin will present Capture. Watch your inbox for an invitation. Want to present a workshop? Want someone else to present? Vote for it in the LISterine Feedback Forum! GIS Team Year-end ReportAugust 21st, 2009 by Carrie MacfarlaneHere is our year-end report on providing geospatial support from the Media Lab (2008-09_GISreport-LISannual). As you know, we were transitioning from 2 years of full-time intern support. This report describes how the transition went. Vote on LISterine WorkshopsAugust 14th, 2009 by Carrie MacfarlaneWe’re planning next year’s program for LISterine workshops , and we want your help. What do YOU want to learn? Use the LISterine Feedback Forum to suggest and vote on workshop topics. You get 10 votes–so vote early and often! You can come back later and change your votes, too. A note to the specialists in the audience: If you see a topic you could present on, please expect that we’ll come after you if that topic rises to the top of the list! Vote accordingly. Visit it now: LISterine Feedback Forum Recent additions to the Vermont CollectionMay 29th, 2009 by Hans RaumSubmitted by Hans Raum Earlier this month I attended the annual convention of the Rutland Railroad Historical Society, held at the Vermont Marble Museum in Proctor on May 2-3. I accepted donations of historical material from three members and took photographs of several marble quarries and railroad bridges that I visited during one of the field trips. The oldest item that was donated to the Rutland Railroad Archives that is part of our Vermont Collection was an 1851 annual report of the Rutland & Burlington Railroad, which was the earliest ancestor of the Rutland Railroad. The advent of railroads in Vermont was crucial to the economic development of the state, including the marble, granite, slate, lumber and dairy industries.
Information Behavior of Researchers – Myths of a Google GenerationMay 15th, 2009 by Judy WattsSubmitted by Judy Watts A January 2008 report by a research team (CIBER) at University College London for the British Library and JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee that promotes the use of academic IT in the UK, shows that while most young people in the US and UK are completely at home with computers, they rely on the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information they find on the web. The report ‘Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future’ also shows that traits commonly associated with younger users – impatience in search and navigation, zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs – are becoming the norm for all age-groups, from young students through undergraduates to professors. The study warns that young people are dangerously lacking in informations skills and presents the challenges for library and information services in meeting the needs of researchers. The Executive Summary of the report is a good read (and worth a look just for the cover graphic). You can find the full report here, and more recent publications of the JISC group, e.g., Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World, are listed here. New WordPress ThemeMay 15th, 2009 by Alex Chapin I have been working on a new WordPress theme for use at Middlebury. I wanted to create a flexible theme that could be used for a variety of sites or could be used to evolve a small simple site into a larger more complex one. I also wanted to create a theme with options similar to those found in Segue, to encourage Segue users to try out WordPress. LISterine Workshop: Entering the World of MashupsMay 8th, 2009 by Carrie MacfarlaneSubmitted by Bryan Carson and Carrie Macfarlane The next LISterine Workshop (LIS Technology, Endeavors, and Resources in Need of Explanation) has been scheduled. On Tuesday, May 19, from 4-5 pm in Library 105, Digital Media Tutors and LIS-GIS Team members Jue Yang and Jack Cuneo will present Entering the World of Mashups. Watch your inbox for an invitation. Want to present a workshop? Want someone else to present? Tell us! Trial access to IMF statistical databasesMay 8th, 2009 by Brenda EllisSubmitted by Brenda Ellis Wonder how we get new library databases? Librarians are inundated by offers for new databases as well as offers to migrate existing resources to online versions or new platforms, which we investigate for relevancy to the curriculum, ease of use, cost, etc. The publishers often give us “trial” access for online resources so we can try before we buy. We currently get a number of statistical publications from the IMF (Int’l Monetary Fund) in print format and/or CD-Rom. We have trial access to the online versions until May 31st. (single user access to the online should cost about the same as what we currently pay for print/cd-roms). Try them out and see if you can figure out how to use them. Comments to me are welcome. Here are the databases: International Financial Statistics These are also on the Economics Subject Guide go/econguide and the new databases/trials page go/trials Exhibit: Frances Dee and the Commodification of the Hollywood StarMay 8th, 2009 by Brenda EllisSubmitted by Brenda Ellis Axinn Center Winter Garden continuing through August 31st. Description: The process of commodification required the frequent reworking of promotional materials devoted to extending a film and its stars pervasively into the public sphere. This exhibit offers more than one hundred representative materials employed by Hollywood studios in marketing not only her films but actress Frances Dee as a star. They include the most common items — posters, lobby cards, photographs, press books, heralds, fan magazines, etc. — to the more obscure — cigarette cards, matchbooks, photoplay editions of novels, film novelizations in magazine format, study guides, playing cards, makeup kits, Coca-Cola trays, dress patterns, and paper dolls. In selecting these materials, a conscious effort has been made to document that Hollywood marketing campaigns were aimed not solely to American filmgoers but to a vast international audience, from Europe to Asia to Latin and South America, who eagerly consumed Hollywood films and their stars.
New Workshop SeriesApril 10th, 2009 by Carrie MacfarlaneSubmitted by Bryan Carson and Carrie Macfarlane
Cool and refreshing! Cleans and protects against boredom and stagnation! Introducing a new monthly workshop series to give us a firsthand look at trends, tools and techniques that influence our work. [Read more about these workshops.] The inaugural LISterine Workshop is scheduled for Wednesday, April 15, from 9-10:30 in Library 105. Hans Raum will demonstrate online and print government information resources. In May, Digital Media Tutors Jue Yang and Jack Cuneo will show us mapping technologies. Watch your inbox for invitations. Want to present a workshop? Want someone else to present? Tell us! Training session on Federal government information resources: past, present and futureMarch 27th, 2009 by Hans RaumSubmitted by Hans Raum On Wednesday morning, April 15 Hans will do a presentation at 9 am in room 105 for any staff members who would like to find out more about both printed and online information resources available from federal government agencies, from the CIA to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. This will be an opportunity to see some of the oldest and most interesting government publications we received early in the 1800’s to the some of the most useful websites created by various federal agencies. The U. S. government is the largest publisher in the world and government agencies quickly took advantage of the potential of the Web to make their services and information resources more widely available. Potential future developments will be discussed, along with their implications for our role as one of seven federal depository libraries in Vermont. Federal website of the month: http://recovery.gov Interesting use of videoMarch 16th, 2009 by Sheldon SaxSubmitted by Shel Sax Dartmouth College has developed a short video to teach first year students about their library resources. The video is avaiable on youtube in the Dartmouth channel. You can access it at: |
LISterine Workshops: LIS Technology, Endeavors, and Resources in Need of Explanation