Posts Tagged ‘Facilities’
October 30th, 2009 by Joseph Watson
Starting on Monday, November 1st, LIS will begin accepting applications from the general public who require ADA access to the Storrs Ave. doors at the Main Library. We are doing this because experts have determined that our current mode of access may not be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Members of the public who do not have a relationship with the College may ask for an application at the Main Lib Circulation Desk. Applications will be accepted at the Circ Desk and forwarded to LIS Administration for processing. In order to qualify for access, applicants must show proof of having received a Disabled Persons placard or car registration from a state government. Qualified applicants will be issued an access card that will allow them to enter and exit the Storrs Ave. doors when the library is open to the public.
This is only for guests of the college. Students who need such access apply to the ADA office and faculty/staff apply to HR.
Staff will continue to let individuals in or out of the Storrs Ave doors on an as needed basis, but now regular users of the library who qualify will have the option of entering and exiting themselves without assistance from staff.
Doreen, Elin, and Joseph have been working with Facilities Services and Public Safety on the details of the arrangements for several months. While the solution that is being implemented is flawed, it is none-the-less something we must do. We do not expect there to be a significant number of qualified people receiving access cards.
There is a brochure at the Info Desk with general ADA info in it. Anyone who routinely encounters library users should take a minute to review that information.
October 7th, 2009 by Joseph Watson
Five years ago this week the College community gathered on the front lawn of the Main Library to officially dedicate the new building. We were fortunate to have perfect weather for the event. It was a great day, full of music, dance, speeches, food, etc.
To veiw more photos of the event find them on the server here–
orgs\LIS\LISstaff\Library Dedication photos
The Main Library is a remarkable success. It has greatly enhanced the academic mission of the College by bringing together services that were scattered around campus. It’s clear the students love the place and we compete with the dining halls (yes, with food!) as the place to meet up with friends. Students spend many hours individually and in groups learning, studying, viewing media, and working on projects of all kinds. The Main Library has become the heart of the campus for many students who never knew Starr Library when it was anything other than a tag at the end of the name of the Axinn Center.
An overview of the history of the project can be found here.
http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/lis/about/library_info/newlib/
To take a walk down memory lane check out this press release.
http://www.middlebury.edu/about/pubaff/news_releases/2004/library_dedication.htm
September 14th, 2009 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Jim Ralph
The Undergraduate Research Office (URO) has moved! It is now located in Library 215. Pat Manley of the Geology department is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Research and Colleen Converse is the administrative assistant for the URO. The URO supports and promotes undergraduate opportunities in inquiry-, creativity-, and experience-based scholarship through research experiences with Middlebury College faculty and other non-Middlebury professionals. Its mission is to integrate undergraduates more fully into the research life of the College. By relocating to the Library, the URO will now be able to collaborate more readily with the staff of LIS and, especially, of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research.
Please feel free to drop in and introduce yourself. Colleen is in the office every day from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and her extension is 3026.
September 1st, 2009 by Joseph Watson
Submitted by Joseph Watson
The person who some day invents a completely reliable high volume printer will make a fortune. Until then, we all know that printers sometimes break down and go off line. Communicating printer status to our users has been a challenge and we hope this recently installed “printer status board” will help. The Helpdesk will simply change out the green dots for red ones when a printer goes off line. The sign is in a high profile location in the Atrium of the Main Library and we expect that our users will grow accustomed to noticing it. Joseph Watson came up with the brainstorm and was able to use spare signs and left over scraps to put it together, so it cost nothing to implement. A similar sign will be installed at the Armstrong Library soon.
August 14th, 2009 by Jeffrey Rehbach
Submitted by Jeff Rehbach
Charles Gwathmey, of the design firm Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, died on Monday, August 3. GSAA designed our new main library. Mr. Gwathmey was present at the dedication of the library in October 2004, and spoke that weekend as part of the Clifford Symposium on October 9, 2004, sharing many of his personal concepts and ideas that led to the design of our wonderful facility. With colleagues at GSAA who worked closely with us in the early part of this decade, we offer our sympathy and mourn this loss.
Announcement on Gwathmey Siegel web site
Obituary from The New York Times
July 16th, 2009 by Doreen Bernier
Submitted by Joseph Watson
Your LIS Emergency Preparedness Committee encourages you to take a few minutes out of your busy day and take one of these training sessions.
Knowing how to put a small fire out is critical in fire loss prevention and in Life Safety. On Wednesday, July 22d
we will hold our annual fire extinguisher training for all College employees. Fires can occur any time and knowing
how to use a fire extinguisher can mean the difference of saving a life or a home. Please join us somewhere around McCullough (depending on construction) for a short presentation and hands on practice in putting a fire out.
Times: 9:00 am, 9:30 am, 10:00 am, 10:30 am, 12:00 pm, 12:30 pm, 1:00 pm, 1:30 pm
Each session should run about 20 minutes. Rain date will be July 29th, same times and location. Just show up, no reservations needed.
July 16th, 2009 by Elin Waagen
Submitted by Elin Waagen
Due to popular demand – and rave reviews – the LIS staff art and craft exhibit was extended until July 3rd.
EXH!BITED! was a fabulous show! Many many thanks to all LIS artists who shared their work with visitors and the College community. Many people remarked on and were amazed by the depth of talent within LIS. Should we do it again next year?
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.
March 27th, 2009 by Joseph Watson
Submitted by Joseph Watson
Display space in the Atrium is now fully booked for the rest of the Spring Term.
Recent displays have been:
- Students Against Violence: pictures of the “Red Ribbon Campaign”.
- Middialogue: seeking answers to questions like “If you could give a friend just one last word of advice, what would it be?”
Upcoming displays will be:
- Feminist Action At Middlebury: asking the questions “What does feminism mean to you?” and “What is feminism mean at Middlebury?”
- Public Health Symposium: presenting highlights of the recent event.
- Invisible Children: promoting the showing of a documentary here at Middlebury and a rally in Burlington
- Queer Athletes: a photo exhibit sponsored by Middlebury Open Queer Alliance
- Spirit In Nature: promoting the walking trails and center in Ripton
- LIS Staff Arts and Crafts Show: us showing our own stuff!
We’re also serving as a location for comment boxes, collection boxes, promotional posters, etc.
Working with the students to schedule and and install these displays is quite a challenge. As always, some of them have thier acts remarkably together and others, not so much. For instance, we’ve been approached by a student who would like to do an interactive work of art in the building later in the semester… she would have a web cam pointed at the piece, work on it, and take suggestions from people watching the web cam on what to do next. This might materialize into something really cool, or might fizzle into nothing. While we do all we can to assist the students, it’s really up to them to pull it off.
I recently learned that students who want to sell anything on campus must first get a permit from CCAL. See go/lis?display for more information.
March 2nd, 2009 by Elin Waagen
Submitted by Elin Waagen
LIS has undertaken a very ambitious project to implement print management for all public printers. Starting on Thursday 2/26 and ending on Friday 3/5 (1 week), LIS will test one aspect of the print management solution in the Main Library. We will create a testing zone which will entail temporarily installing two print release stations in LIB242. The purpose for creating this test zone is to evaluate the print release station in real world conditions. We will be asking users to provide feedback about the print release stations. We have created documentation and signage to assist our users with this temporary change. Internal testing found the print release stations intuitive and easy to use.
During our testing, please try out the new stations and provide your feedback.
If you experience problems or you are notified of problems with the print release stations during the testing, please direct them to the Helpdesk (x2200 or helpdesk@middlebury.edu). We will deal with the problems as quickly as possible.
If the printer goes to “sleep” between print jobs, users may need to press the big Green GO button on the printer.
The computers in 242 are dedicated to print release and cannot be used for other purposes during this test.
Printers without release stations will continue to be available on the 3rd floor of the Main Library (LIB303) or the lower level of the Main Library (LIB142).
Please direct all printing from walk-up stations to the upper and lower level printers.
What is a print release station? A print release station allows users (faculty, staff, students, and guests) to release their print jobs to the printers rather than use the current configuration of automatically printing jobs to the printers.
Why install a print release station? A print release station should reduce the number of unnecessary or duplicate print jobs from being printed, give the user greater control over their printing, and increase print availability.
How does a print release station work? When a user sends a document to the printer, it queues on the print release station. The user must log into the print release station using their Middlebury username and password to view jobs they submitted.
The user sees only the documents that they sent to the printer and they can release or cancel the print request.
During this test period guests can log in with the daily pclab username and password.
February 13th, 2009 by Carrie Macfarlane
Submitted by Carrie Macfarlane
We received a request for a “cell phone room” in the Main Library. We’ve posted a preliminary response here: LIS Suggestions – Cell Phone Room. Do you think that we should provide a soundproof space for impromptu phone conversations? If so, what should it look like and where should it be? We’ll admit that the idea of a bright red phone booth occurred to us. What do you think? Should we set aside an existing group study? Is there another (inexpensive) solution?
Or, is this something that falls outside of our responsibilities?
Please discuss!
February 13th, 2009 by Joseph Watson
Submitted by Joseph Watson
“Our roofs don’t leak.” That’s what the architects said in a meeting with library staff when the plans for the new library were first presented. Somebody in the audience noticed that much of the library was covered with a flat roof and pointed out that there was a history of flat roofs failing in the harsh New England climate. Their concern was met with firm assurances from the architects that they knew what they were doing and the roof would not leak.
Well, here we are.
Since the Main Library opened in 2004 we have had more than 20 water incursions. Four of them were from leaky pipes or malfunctioning HVAC equipment, which is bound to happen with new construction. The worst of these was when a part in a cooling unit in the server room broke, flooding the raised floor almost to overflowing. Five of them were from groundwater rising up and flowing in, which, hopefully, is a very rare event. Fortunately only the floors got wet. Twelve of them were from roof leaks, sometimes persistent ones. A particularly tedious leak started on the upper mezzanine on the north side of the building in the spring of 2006. For two years water intermittently dripped through the ceiling, ruining drywall and carpet, and distracting students studying nearby. Roofers were finally able to fix the leak in the summer of 2008.
Library materials have gotten wet only twice. The first time was when the building was new and window seals above the atrium failed allowing water to flow in around the window, travel along the sloped ceiling, and then drip down onto the art books. That leak was fixed and hasn’t recurred.
The second time books got wet was on Friday night, January 30, 2009. Just as the building was closing, a student stopped at the Circulation Desk and said there was water leaking onto book shelves on the upper level. Kellam Ayres investigated and acted to save the day. She informed Facilities Services who deployed “on call” personnel who were conveniently already on campus. Kellam worked with them to remove the wet books from the shelves, cover the effected book stacks with plastic in order to divert the water, and place buckets under the drips. (Pictured above.) She then set the wet books up to air dry. We in Preservation really appreciate the efforts of colleagues like Kellam who follow procedures and carefully ensure that damage to the collections is minimized. THANK YOU KELLAM!!! The leak continues to drip on and off. Facilities Services, who are also frustrated by these problems, had a roofer here this week to try to locate the source and they were unable to. We’ll be keeping an eye on this leak and will be on the look out for others.
When conditions indicate threats such as heavy rains in warm weather or a snow covered roof with light rains in cold weather, I routinely inspect the upper level for leaks during the weekdays and Circulation Staff members do the same in the evening and on the weekends. We’ve been lucky that all parts of the building are pretty heavily traveled so leaks have always been discovered fairly soon after they start.
Each library Circulation Desk has an Emergency Manual in which procedures are outlined. These manuals can be consulted when something goes wrong. The portion on reacting to water leaks is excerpted below.
“Water Damage
1. Stop flow of water. As needed call Facilities Management: x-5472 (If Facilities Management is closed, call security x-5911 to reach “on call” facilities workers.)
2. As the situation requires, protect items not yet wet by covering with plastic or relocate them to a dry area. Turn off, unplug, and cover any computer equipment with plastic to protect it from water damage. (Supplies are located in closet next to 135.)
3. Until setting them up to dry:
Do not open wet books.
Do not separate single sheets.
Do not remove covers.
Do not disturb wet file boxes, prints, drawings, and photographs.
4. Notify the Circulation Desk Supervisor, who will in turn notify the Disaster Team particularly the Preservation & Processing Manager. The Disaster Team is responsible for preparing a plan of action. See contact information on page A-3 and call them at home as needed.
For more information on recovery from a water incursion see Section E”
October 22nd, 2008 by Carrie Macfarlane
New Armstrong Reading Area
We’ve increased the size of the reading area on the main floor of Armstrong Library. Come to see the changes!
- We removed over 1,000 volumes of outdated and otherwise unnecessary printed materials, and this allowed us to empty 2 bookcases.
- The floor space that we gained by removing the bookcases has been filled with a combination of tables and armchairs. We’ll add a few more tables and chairs from staff offices soon, once we acquire replacements from storage. Because of a pre-existing budget request, we’ll be able to add 5 new study carrels downstairs, too.
- This combination of tables, armchairs and study carrels was requested by students last year on the comments poster we hung at the entrance to the library. (The new video and laptop viewing equipment in the group studies was requested too.)
- In addition, we eventually hope to add more computers and lamps, but wiring and budgetary limitations might not allow this. We also hope to purchase more dry erase boards, maybe some board games, and who knows what else!
October 17th, 2008 by Joseph Watson
Submitted by Joseph Watson
- In observation of Breast Cancer Awareness month student organizers will display general information and certificates acknowledging donations that are being accepted in the dining halls.
- The Men’s Advisory Group is presenting a video in the Atrium and elsewhere on campus.
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The Roosevelt Institution, Middlebury’s non-partisan student-run political think tank, will present a display on McCain and Obama’s policy stances on immigration, foreign policy, the economy, healthcare, education, and the environment. This display will be in place for the full week before the election and will compliment the voter registration display already in place. (See previous LISt entry: http://blogs.middlebury.edu/list/2008/09/26/voters-in-the-lobby/
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And finally, LIS will be hosting the Associated Press’ exhibit “The American President” from Election Day until the Thanksgiving break. Joseph is creating panels for the two presidents who were born in Vermont to augment the AP exhibit since both Arthur and Coolidge are not represented in the touring exhibit. We’ve also received brochures from the State of Vermont historic sites for each Vermont born president. Below, please see the press release prepared for us by Blaire Kloman in our Office of Public Affairs. (It’s so great to work at Middlebury College where one can pass this sort of task off to colleagues with the appropriate expertise!)
Here is an example of the kind of photo that will be on display.
LOS ANGELES/ July 1960 U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy, D-Mass., makes his way through a crowd of supporters and journalists as he arrives for the Democratic National Convention. Kennedy turned back challenges by former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson and U.S. Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, D-Texas, who accepted the vice presidential nomination. (AP)
For more information you can visit http://www.ap.org/americanpresident/#
PRESS RELEASE
Media contact: Blair Kloman
802-443-5483/bkloman@middlebury.edu
Oct. 20, 2008
IMMEDIATE
Middlebury College Library to host Associated Press photo exhibit of American presidents Nov. 4-25
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. ― “The American President,” an exhibit of more than 80 compelling news photos from the Associated Press (AP) spanning the past 60 years, will be on view at the Middlebury College Library from Tuesday, Nov. 4, to Tuesday, Nov. 25. The display shows American presidents at war and at ease, in victory and in defeat, confronting national crises and facing personal scandals, running for office and leading the country on the world stage.
Amid the extraordinary voter interest in the 2008 race for the White House, the new exhibit helps illustrate one constant in the ever-shifting media landscape. The coverage of the White House by AP reporters and photographers has been the dominant source of presidential news across the United States and around the world.
“We’re especially pleased to host the AP’s American President exhibit at this time, since it coincides with one of the most important national elections in recent memory. These photos of our past presidents capture the human side of those who have served, not just the formal face of the presidency. As with all of our work in the library, we hope the exhibit will encourage not only reflection, but also action,’ said Dean of Library and Information Services Michael Roy.
The exhibit features a number of the AP’s Pulitzer Prize-winning images, including Paul Vathis’ view of John F. Kennedy conferring gravely with his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, at Camp David after the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961; Ron Edmonds’ rapid sequence documenting the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan; and White House photos taken during Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment battle. “The American President” also includes memorable shots from the AP Images photo library, which contains more than 10 million film and digital images, and pictures taken in this year’s run for the White House by Senators Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama.
According to exhibit organizers, the college will be hosting the full photo exhibit with the 16 panels as well as a looping video on a monitor. In order to include the two presidents who were born in Vermont, the college library organizers are preparing two additional panels with photos of Calvin Coolidge and Chester A. Arthur to augment the display.
Exhibit hours will coincide with library hours, available online at www.middlebury.edu/academics/lis/about/hours_maps/hours_lib/. For more information, contact Middlebury College Preservation and Processing Manager Joseph Watson at 802-443-5487 or jwatson@middlebury.edu.
– end –
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!
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