Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
June 15th, 2009 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Doreen Bernier
June 10th was the opening day of “Exh!bited”, the LIS staff arts and crafts exhibit.
Special thanks to all the LIS artisans for their truly beautiful contributions. This was a great opportunity to showcase our special talents and interests and bring the community together – and also surprise and delight users and visitors.
The opening reception was graced with beautiful live music, courtesy of Dan Frostman.
Early arrivals enjoyed the only edible craft piece - chocolate dipped strawberries.
Included below are some photos from the reception.
The exhibit organizers, Morgan, Doreen and Elin, would like to thank Joseph for his invaluable assistance in setting up the space. Thanks also to Scott and Rachel for their contributions, and with thanks to all for taking the time out from your busy schedules to assist in bringing this exhibit to life.
The exhibit will run until June 26th.
       
June 15th, 2009 by Cynthia Watters
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NELINET
June 10, 2009
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“Rainy Day” Edition
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JUST ADDED!
NELINET IT Conference 2009: Open Source in Your Library
October 9, 2009 – Olin College, Needham, MA
NELINET is proud to present its 5th Annual IT Conference, “Open Source in Your Library.” This exciting event will show you how libraries are implementing open source products for a variety of uses and will expand your understanding of the advantages of using open source products in libraries. Listen to our panel discussion delve more deeply into this topic and learn first hand about implementation and maintenance of open source products from those who are using them! A fantastic group of open source innovators include:Dan Scott, Systems Librarian for Laurentian University, barista, library geek, and open source dabbler will be NELINET’s keynote speaker. You may know him from such projects as PHP (PEAR’s File_MARC package and PDO documentation), Apache Derby, and the Evergreen open-source ILS project.
Karen Coombs, Library Journal 2009 Mover and Shaker, trend spotter and Head of Web Services at the University of Houston Libraries, will discuss how her library is using Drupal for its intranet and for a pilot project involving digital library materials.
Joe Lucia is the University Librarian and director of Falvey Memorial Library at Villanova University. His advocacy for open source led his library to develop VuFind, an open-source discovery layer for library catalogs.
Conference Cost for Unlimited Members: $85 (Middlebury is an unlimited member)
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Attention Accidental Webmasters!
Accidental Webmaster Series: Just Enough MySQL – Just Enough PHP
Starts July 14th – ONLINE SERIES
In this six-week series, you will learn just enough PHP and MySQL to explore, understand and implement dynamic tools and content. Each week, you will take part in a 1.5-hour online lecture and discussion to introduce new concepts and techniques. Between online live meetings, you will work at your own pace to practice what you’ve learned, share ideas with colleagues and receive individualized guidance and feedback in Moodle, our open source online learning management system.
Workshop Series cost: $150
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Big Events!
FREE SEMINAR
How to Stay Relevant in Your Institution
June 24, 2009 – NELINET, Southborough, MA
Co-sponsored by the Boston Chapter of the Special Libraries Association
SAVE THE DATE
Robert L. Cunningham Annual
Bibliographic Services Conference 2009
November 13, 2009 – College of Holy Cross, Worcester, MA
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June 5th, 2009 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Howie McCausland
We have just completed installing Wireless Access Points to provide full coverage throughout Coffrin and Stewart dorms, and have installed an extensive new network infrastructure (wired, and wireless) throughout the newly-renovated Proctor to support the new expanded College Book Store.
Good wireless signal is now available in about 90% of campus building interior spaces, as shown on the accompanying map.
June 5th, 2009 by Brenda Ellis
Posted by Brenda Ellis
CQ Researcher is one of the resources the library subscribes to. This week’s topic seems very relevant and timely for us. Quoting from their email announcement:
“Future of Books” by Sarah Glazer, May 29, 2009 Will traditional print books disappear?
The migration of books to electronic screens has been accelerating with the introduction of mobile reading on Kindles, iPhones and Sony Readers and the growing power of Google’s Book Search engine. (more…)
June 5th, 2009 by Carrie Macfarlane
Submitted by Carrie Macfarlane
Please join us at next week’s workshop called “Looking at Library Research.” It’s part of the CTLR Pedagogy Roundtable Series.
Thursday, June 11
1:30 – 2:30 pm
Looking at Library Research, Library 230
Presenters: Brenda Ellis, Joe Toth, Andrew Wentink
Conveners: Carrie Macfarlane and Terry Simpkins
Has the way you do research changed over the past few years? Have you noticed a change in the research your students are doing? Finding information has become easier than ever, but sifting out the best information remains a challenge even for experienced researchers. In this roundtable we will examine some of the changes in the resources libraries provide and in how they provide them, as well as discuss how these mesh (or don’t!) with student and faculty expectations.
May 29th, 2009 by Doreen Bernier
Heartfelt thanks to all of you in LIS for your good wishes and for Wednesday’s lovely send-off breakfast for the four of us! I feel fortunate to have been able to work with you all these years. With fond best wishes, Jean Simmons
May 22nd, 2009 by Carrie Macfarlane
Submitted by Carrie Macfarlane
Thanks to Jack Cuneo for leading this week’s LISterine Workshop on mashups, and thanks to all who attended. Thanks also to Scott Witt for recording the session! If you weren’t able to attend, you can watch the video; there’s a link in the LISterine blog.
May 15th, 2009 by Doreen Bernier
Present: the usual suspects (Backus, Cutter, Peddie, Rehbach, Roy, Sax, Simpkins)
1) LIS Announcements – The group reviewed and edited emails to be distributed to LIS regarding ERP participants, “stopping things” and about the Segue sunset. We agreed these will be sent as separate emails. Mike will also send a separate email to ERP participants to let them know that a general announcement will be distributed.
2) ERP celebrations – The college will be holding a college-wide celebration for ERP folks sometime in May or early June. We discussed perhaps having some smaller LIS gatherings as well, since the larger one may feel slightly impersonal. Timing is an issue, since retirements are happening anytime from June to November. Carol will be coordinating.
3) Goals/Projects – We talked more about what should happen to ideas coming out of the advisory group meetings, how we can keep faculty informed, and how we process them internally. Shel will meet with Carrie Macfarlane and Bryan Carson to review the list of items compiled from this year’s advisory group meetings and discuss plans for tracking these ideas and their outcomes. Jim Beauchemin should also be invited to this meeting.
4) Project Directory – Mike and Chris Norris are beginning work on this. We talked a bit about the difference between a goal and a project, with a fair amount of semantic wrangling over nomenclature, but eventually we all came to the common understanding that for each LIS goal, there will be a series of projects and or other discrete steps enacted in support of achieving the goal.
5) MIIS/Midd new programs – Jeff is gathering information on frequency and types of formal (as well as occasional/informal) communications between Midd and MIIS library and IT staff, at the request of Dave Donahue (who is tracking this for all areas across campus). As Monterey and Middlebury explore joint academic program offerings, we’ll need to be assess how these will be supported by and/or otherwise impact LIS.
May 15th, 2009 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Joseph Watson
“Did you see the massage parlor in the library?” a colleague asked…
In coordination with the Gus Jordan, Dean of the College, two students, Mariella Saavedra and Ann Selvadurai, working as volunteers for a nationwide group promoting wellness called Active Minds http://www.activeminds.org/ sponsored stress breaks with massage therapists in the Harman Periodicals Reading Area during exams this week. The two local professional massage therapists were kept quite busy!
May 15th, 2009 by Michael Roy
As part of my work as an editor at Academic Commons, I’ve been working on a new issue that we’re calling The Future of Everything. You can read more about the plans for the issue on-line.
As part of the run-up to the publication of the issue, which will take the form of an anthology of the best writing and resources that contemplate the future of various topics, we’ve set up a delicious account and are crowdsourcing the collection of readings.
If you happen to use delicious and have bookmarked particularly good readings and resources on topics such as the future of reference, the future of the book, the future of the web, and so on, please feel free to suggest materials by tagging them for:academiccommons. (There is a brief description of how this works also on-line.)
Thanks so far to Mike Lynch for suggesting some good materials on the future of reference.
– mike
May 8th, 2009 by Doreen Bernier
Cookie Night will be held on Tuesday, May 12th. As always, we need a large quantity of cookies for the students to enjoy, so please fire up those ovens and help make another successful Cookie Night. The students truly appreciate all your efforts.
Cookies can be brought to LIB250E throughout the day and don’t forget to put your name on your trays and dishes.
May 8th, 2009 by Michael Roy
Submitted by Mike Roy
In the upcoming months, I am planning on working with Chris Norris to develop a project directory for all of LIS that will allow us to present to ourselves and our constituents an overview of all of the projects that we are working on. In addition, I am also keen to see us improve upon our goal setting process from last year so that we also have a comprehensive list of all of our goals in a single place for us to see what we’ve committed to accomplishing in the upcoming year.
In thinking about how to approach these two activities, I’ve begun to wonder: is there a difference between a goal and a project? Are there projects that can’t be described in the language of goals? Are there goals that can’t be described in the language of a project? It seems to me that they could sensibly be handled with a single list.
As I envision this list of our goals and projects would let us know:
- the name of the goal or project
- a description
- the date it would begin
- the date it would end
- the people and resources involved in achieving it
- who would benefit from it being completed
I’m interested to hear from the rest of LIS about whether or not they think this is the right information to keep track of, what differences they see between goals and projects, and what we can do to optimize the benefit of this, and minimize the cost (time and energy) of maintaining such lists.
May 8th, 2009 by Doreen Bernier
Present: Mary Backus, Doreen Bernier, Tom Cutter, Carol Peddie, Mike Roy, Shel Sax, Terry Simpkins
Guest: Chris Norris1. Google applications for education – Chris Norris discussed Google applications for education, a collection of widgets and appliances provided by Google for free to higher ed. institutions. A number of other schools are currently using Google apps, and most appear pleased with the service; there are currently about 90 people at Middlebury using some element of this, which actually complicates matters from a testing and development standpoint.
We also spent considerable time talking specifically about migrating student (only) email from Exchange to Gmail, and talking about various scenarios by which this might be accomplished.
Other features of the package include:
* Customizable home pages
* Calendaring
* Document storage and collaboration
* Website creation
* Online chat.
Currently, we have done some preliminary testing on the migration of mail and other functionality. We also reviewed and edited the Google contract and returned it to Google for review. The ADs expressed interested in seeing the contract when it is returned. At this point we should be ready to move to the next phase of technical issues, but there are policy implications that need more discussion: support, administration of it, privacy, etc. On the last issue, the instance for higher ed partners is somewhat different than for public Gmail in that there is no advertising or data mining, and so is a presumably more secure environment. But Google may reserve the right to change this unilaterally, so that needs investigation as well.
Other issues to consider:
* We could enable dual email delivery as long as single sign-on is in place.
* Should we focus on new student accounts with Gmail and worry about everyone else at a later date?
* Concern about the calendaring piece on campus; how would we synchronize Google and Outlook calendars?
* We need to develop strategies for single sign-on programming, tech support and documentation, as well as email migration tools.
Timing the potential migration of student email was also a discussed at length. Several folks expressed concern that we don’t have the capacity to do this for fall semester, and there was some sentiment to wait until December to allow us time to create a responsible a project plan and prepare.
Action item: Create project team with the charge of investigating these issues, including timing, in a responsible fashion. Project Team: Chris/Tom (one would be project manager), Mark Pyfrom, Alex Chapin, Adam Franco, Jim Beauchemin, Joe Antonioli, Rick James.
2. Goals – ADs agreed to review and update 0809 Goals in Google Docs. This document will help to create the LIS Annual report. Mike would like to share goals info with FLAC
3. End of year report – Mike is shooting for a completion date of July 1, 4–5 pages long. Auditors noted that we did not have a report for last year. Much hanging of heads and looking abashed.
4. NITLE membership + DSpace annual fee – In our ongoing efforts to reduce spending, we wondered whether the NITLE/DSpace expense was useful and whether or not we should consider alternatives, perhaps support for this functionality in Drupal. No resolution thus far.
5. Tech Fair – Support considerations, preparations & requirements. – Shel will talk to Mary and Jeff after meeting – June 4th event date – requiring 15 computer stations
6. Changes to admin org structure for college – Mike will still be reporting to Tim and the administrative change should not have much impact on our organization
7. Idea: technology resource committee (like SRC or space committee) – Mike proposed establishing a committee to assist with major programming decisions. Attendees will most likely be from the College Administration.
8. Budget meeting discussion – Comptroller’s Office would like to model for budget reductions ranging from 2-20%. We all wept and gnashed our teeth at the prospect of a 20% cut. Area budgets need to be reviewed again for the upcoming AD retreat on 5/15.
9. Academic Advisory Groups – We talked about defining mutual expectations regarding issues that surface in the Academic Advisory group meetings. Items coming out of these meetings imply, at a minimum, consideration of the issue by LIS even if outright resolution is not feasible. Since Shel attends all of these meetings, he agreed to bring concerns to ADs for discussion.
April 24th, 2009 by Joseph Watson
Joseph Watson– A few weeks ago I mentioned an ambitious art project that a few students were intending to present in the Main Library. Well, Sally Hatfield ‘09 and Katy Laird ‘09 have pulled it together! Check out http://www.yourmiddleburycanvas.com/ and stop by the Harman Periodicals Reading Area to see it in person.
April 24th, 2009 by Doreen Bernier
As we did this past winter, once again we plan to hold another Cookie Night during final exams. This event is always such a success, providing a wide assortment of cookies for students to munch on while studying. So, please help to make this Cookie Night just as successful by making your favorite recipes for all to enjoy. Cookies can be brought to Library 250E throughout the day.
April 24th, 2009 by Joseph Antonioli
Submitted by Joe Antonioli
Announcing a new video hosting service, MIDDMedia. This service allows for the streaming and downloading of mp4 and flv video, and mp3 audio files for people with Middlebury and Monterey accounts.
In addition, we have integrated this service with our web platforms- the college CMS, Segue, WordPress and Mediawiki. Log into your site, blog or wiki and manage your media, allowing you to add the media to a page.
Is there ONE place that I can go to to see videos created by people at Middlebury? In answer to this question, we have been working with Communications, and are now beta-launching MIDDTube, a place where we can pull together video from many places, whether the video is hosted by MIDDMedia, YouTube, or any other service.
April 24th, 2009 by Joseph Antonioli
Submitted by Joe Antonioli
White Whale Web Services will be coming to campus on April 26th, meeting with faculty, students and staff from all areas of the college. Monday the 27th and Tuesday the 28th will be full days, with meetings and activities from 8:30am until 9pm. Wednesday, the 29th, there will be a couple short wrap up sessions before they fly back home to Oakland, CA.
During this visit, they will be meeting with faculty represntatives from Film and Multimedia Culture, Economics and Chemistry. Students will be able to share their thoughts as White Whale sets up camp during dinner at Atwater Dining Hall on Monday, and Ross Dining on Tuesday. Meetings have been scheduled at McCardell Bicentennial Hall, Chip Kenyon ‘85 Arena, and various places in between.
If you miss your chance to spot White Whale, fear not! They will be returning to campus at a later date, more information to follow.
April 24th, 2009 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Jean Simmons
When you’re working at the Information Desk,
are you reluctant to interrupt another staff person
to get help with a question?
Remember Pidgin
One of Reference’s primary roles is to help people with their research. So it’s okay to interrupt—especially if a pidgin green light is on! To see who’s readily available, go to the start menu and then pidgin, to get phone numbers and to see who’s signed in. (Pidgin is also available on Circulation Desk computers.)
Even if there are no green lights, please don’t hesitate to refer a research question to someone in Reference. If it’s off hours, encourage the questioner to send queries electronically. (This mailbox is checked several times a day.)
http://blogs.middlebury.edu/libforms/2009/01/12/ask-a-librarian/
April 24th, 2009 by Brenda Ellis
Submitted by Brenda Ellis
The conference will be held May 12th and 13th at the Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center in S. Burlington. This year’s theme is: “Speaking Up! Advocacy for Libraries”. Our own former Dean Barbara Doyle-Wilch is one of the co-chairs of the conference. Featured speakers include Chris Bohjalian, Marshall Keys, Wayne Piper, Keith Curry Lance, and Jan Reynolds. Mark Nash will perform “Underneath the Lintel”. The highlight of Tues. will surely be the advocacy cocktail party “Celebrate Vermont Libraries” (can you guess which committee I’m on) which will feature displays highlighting the impact of VT libraries on our users. Many politicians and officials have been invited (did I say the theme is advocacy?). See the conference website for all the details. http://www.vermontlibraryconference.org/index.html
April 10th, 2009 by Michael Lynch
Submitted by Mike Lynch
On Wednesday, April 15th Barbara Herzog from Innovtive will be here to give a demo of their Encore product. The demo will take place in LIB 145 at 10:00 a.m. We saw a demo of this product some time ago but it has evolved a good bit since then.
This is just one of several products we are looking at which will enhance discovery of the resources we have to offer.
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