Crew of the Month – Research and Instruction Workgroup – Carrie Macfarlane, Hans Raum, Steve Bertolino, Brenda Ellis, Richard Jenkins, Joy Pile, Wendy Shook and Kristina Simmons

Employee of the Month – Jim Stuart

Student Employee of the Month – Meade Atkeson

Congratulations to all!

The R&R Crew needs award nominations! Nominate LIS students, staff, & crews at go/nominate! Please be sure to include details about why the nominee deserves recognition.

January:

Crew of the Month – MIDDCORE Project Team.  Team members are Ian McBride, Travis Stafford, Mike Schuster, Mike Lynch, Kara Gennarelli, David Ludwig, Joe Antonioli, Pij Slater, Alisa Cutter, LeRoy Graham and Kathy Weiss

Employee of the Month – Joe Durante

Student Employee of the Month – Jaweed Ahmadi

November 2012

Crew of the Month – Media Services.  Members are Petar Mitrevski, Charlie Conway, Stewart Lane, Scott Witt and Danielle Madison

Employee of the Month – Danielle Madison

October 2012

Crew of the Month – Liaisons Group.  Members are Rebekah Irwin, Joy Pile, Wendy Shook, Kellam Ayres, Hans Raum, Carrie Macfarlane, Steve Bertolino, Brenda Ellis, Richard Jenkins, Bryan Carson, Shel Sax, Terry Simpkins

Employee of the Month – Joseph Watson

September 2012

Crew of the Month –Collection Management.  Members are Sue Driscoll, Marlena Evans, Arabella Holzpfel, Michele McHugh, Michael Warner, Rebekah Irwin and Lisa McLaughlin

Employee of the Month – Brian Foley

Student Employee of the Month – : Leandro Giglioli (Leo)

Congratulations to all!

The R&R Crew needs award nominations! Nominate LIS students, staff, & crews at go/nominate! Please be sure to include details about why the nominee deserves recognition.

December 19, 2012

Mike noted that the R&R did not have awards for this month since nominations were light and reminded everyone to participate in the nomination process. For a link to the nomination form:  http://www.middlebury.edu/offices/technology/lis/about/recrec/nomination

Mike announced that all the open replacement positions have been approved by the SRC.

Carol announced that Joe Antonioli will be assuming a newly created position as the Senior Curricular Innovation Specialist. In addition to serving as the head of LIS’ curricular technology program, Joe will work closely with Shel Sax, Director of Educational Technology, and will co-lead the liaison program with Carrie Macfarlane

Carrie Macfarlane introduced Kristina Simmons who will be working on a part-time basis for Research and Instruction.

Mike then introduced Tim Spears and James Davis who came to discuss the “cost and relevance” of what it means to be a liberal arts college in the 21st century.  Tim and James have been talking to faculty and will extend discussion to staff and students in the spring.

November 28. 2012

Mike presented the Media Services Group with this month’s Crew of the Month Award.  Congratulations to Petar Mitrevski, Scott Witt, Stewart Lane, Charlie Conway and Danielle Madison.

Petar Mitrevski presented the Employee of the Month award to Danielle Madison.

Mike presented the draft staffing plan:  https://docs.google.com/a/middlebury.edu/presentation/d/1BnTJxjtXJdHQdWm8vLUSlfTAM7M1OFYFM40nSpthQ2w/edit#slide=id.p

Aline Germain-Rutherford joined the group and gave a detailed presentation on Middlebury Interactive Languages (MIL), which provides online languages courses to pre-college students.  Click here for more information on MIL:  http://www.middlebury.edu/mil

Present:  Mike Roy, Mary Backus, Carol Peddie, Chris Norris and Doreen Bernier

The meeting began with some general discussion on the following topics.

Attendance expectations for All LIS Staff meetings – the last meeting yielded low numbers in attendance.  ADs will remind staff that their attendance is expected at these meetings.

Website has been updated to include the AD Team charge.

Summer schedule – vacation and holiday schedules were discussed.  Mike will contact Michael Geisler to discuss closing the library at 5 pm on July 4th.

Optional All LIS Staff Meetings – we talked about the timing of these meetings and it was decided to hold optional informational meetings to once a month and to not hold them during the summer.

The first year for the R&R crew comes to a close on June 30th with new membership starting in July.  Membership will be recruited from past Employee of the Month Award Winners.  It was also decided to only give awards out only during the academic year.  You will hear more from the R&R Crew about an upcoming all-staff potluck in August.

Mike distributed the charge for the “Communications” group to the ADs for discussion.  The charge was approved with slight modifications.  The deadline to identify and define milestones will be June 30th.  Mike will distribute to group members.

Proposal for Penalty Point System proposal has been approved by the ADs for students and staff.  A blog post will be prepared and submitted.

Chris led the ADs through a review and discussion about the Network Monitoring & Incident Response Policy, which will be added to the handbook, after receiving approval from President’s Staff.

Area 51 notes, May 10, 2012

Present:  Mike Roy, Mark Backus, Shel Sax, Chris Norris, Carol Peddie Terry Simpkins and Doreen Bernier

The ADs discussed the timing of conducting the Google/MS Live evaluation.  In order to take into consideration staff workloads, Mike asked the ADs to estimate project timelines/completion dates for major current projects to see when it would be feasible to complete this evaluation.

In anticipation of an upcoming discussion with the Web Team, Terry asked the ADs for input on elements of a new charge for Web Team mark III.  The ADs suggested a number of topics, which Terry will bring to the team for discussion.  On a related note, Chris presented a draft of a team charge for the Security Team to the ADs for approval.  Rather than a list of specific tasks, this charge serves as a sort of “statement of purpose,” which the Team can use on a continuing basis to set goals each year.  This approach might also benefit other teams as well.  After some discussion, the ADs approved the charge and are happy to meet with Team members for follow-up, if desired.

Mary Backus presented a proposal for printer consolidation to review and discuss prior to presenting it to President’s Staff.  ADs were interested in learning more about the money saved and time gained from supporting fewer printers, as well as the criteria for deciding which printers to remove (e.g., distance or easy access to printers, no. of pages printed, etc.)  Mary will provide more information on this.

Chris Norris gave a system level monitoring & availability update, sharing the data compiled in the last 3 months on how College systems are performing.  Over this period of time, systems were performing at 99.81% and not the preferred 99.9%, due to downtimes on systems for a variety of reasons (migration, Middfiles affects, scheduled upgrades, and other planned outages). Some systems of concern are iGreentree, Frontrush, Segue and the MIIS Drupal site. Systems working at 100% were Google, Rave, Cybersource and Blackberry.

Thanks for reading,

Terry & Doreen

Present:  Mike Roy, Carol Peddie, Chris Norris, Mary Backus and Doreen Bernier

The Optional All-LIS Meeting on April 19th will be titled “Customer care and feedback: techniques and tips discussed”, given  by Jess Isler.  It will be held in LIB145 at 3:00.

Last week’s team assessment sessions with Fred Schmitt were discussed.  Teams need clarity and agreement on the following issues:

•     Clarify team charges and scope
•     Communication schedule
•     Prioritization of goals
•     Resources, staffing and budget
•     Clarify roles
•     Team membership, or if we even still need a team

 The Security Team needs a new charge.

Future team assessment will be done on a team by team basis, with open discussion by team sponsor.  Sheila Andrus might be asked to facilitate future meetings.

The rest of the meeting time was devoted to discussing  the results of last week’s team assessment of the AD team and how to use those results to improve the team, moving forward.

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AD meeting Notes from April 5, 2012

Present:  Mike Roy, Shel Sax, Mary Backus, Terry Simpkins and Doreen Bernier

Mary presented to the ADs, a recommendation from Education and Training Team to modify language regarding technology skills for every job description in LIS. The recommended language to be included is as follows:

“Demonstrate proficiency in general computing skills, such as e-mail, word processing, and use of web-based applications and resources.

Ability to operate in a networked computer environment, including the appropriate use of file storage, understanding security best practices, and a willingness and ability to develop new competencies”.

The ADs have approved this language change.  This topic will be brought to the managers for discussion.

The AD Retreat has been cancelled for this month.

Upcoming agenda items:

• Digital scholarship-presentation.conversation with Rebekah Irwin
• Update on MIIS infrastructure project
• Web Team discussion on needs analysis and usability testing activities and a communication/awareness plan to share results and presentation materials to LIS

——————————————————————-
AD Minutes from March 29, 2012
Present:  Mike Roy, Mary Backus, Carol Peddie, Chris Norris and Doreen Bernier

Management Training – the next steps.  The ADs talked about how to proceed now that the management training sessions are completed.  How do we apply what was learned to LIS?  This topic will be brought to the Workgroup Leaders at the next Manager’s meeting for discussion.

In January Mike prepared and published  the first LIS Quarterly Report which included highlights of projects over a three month period.  This week Mike distributed his second installment report covering January-March to the ADs for their review.  The report contents were discussed and edits were made to this very comprehensive document.

Reminder to Managers to prepare the Annual Report write-up for their workgroups.  The write-up should be one-page in length and submitted to Doreen Bernier by June 30th.  The deadline for statistics is July 10th.

LIS Blog – How do we communicate newsworthy topics to the community?   This topic will also be brought to the managers to discuss.

Also visiting:  Space Team members Hans Raum, Joseph Watson, Todd Sturtevant and Peggy Fischel

The Space Team joined the ADs to discuss plans for the possible use of 118 South Main Street for LIS staff offices.  The Space Team will need to take in consideration office space for new hires for both phase 1 and 2 of the LIS staffing plan, and also plan for the return of the upper level offices for the faculty use.  A tour of the facility will be arranged for the Space Team to see if it could fill our space needs. As mentioned in last week’s AD notes, the lower level of the building is currently available and could house 8-9 staff members.  (To be clear, the decision about whether or not we can use the space is a decision that the campus space committee will make.)

Who handles assessments?   Since Carol has taken on the directorship of Enterprise Applications, who will handle assessments?  Terry will take on all surveys, except for Educause, which Carol will continue to handle.

Annual Reports and Goal Setting for next year.
·         Annual Report:  All written materials need to be submitted by June 30th, with statistics being submitted by July 10th.
·         Goals:  all goals should also be in place by June 30th.  The ADs need to work up “smart” goals for their areas for the coming year.
·         Strategic Directions and Vision:  Time needs to be spent on polishing these documents and making sure they are aligned with the College goals.

Future agenda items:
1. How to communicate to all of LIS what we learned at management training

Topics discussed:

Video streaming: Mike indicated that there is a fair amount of interest by College Advancement to use video to reach alumni via the web.  After a lengthy discussion on this topic, the ADs decided to form a group to investigate how we can create workflow and processes for cross-campus use. Several questions need to be addressed like:

• What’s the right format for video streaming and for archival purposes?   
• How quickly could we move to a new standard (perhaps mp4)?
• How might adopting a new standard impact our workflows?

Project directory move to “Roadmap”:   The timeline for changing over the current project directory to “Roadmap” was discussed.  It was decided that Chris Norris will provide training to workgroup leaders at the September Managers meeting so they can start to incorporate current project milestones into the new program.

Goals: The August Manager’s meeting will be devoted to workgroup goals.  We discussed how to link workgroups/teams goals to the larger institutional mission and incorporating them into the LIS strategic planning site/.

Google/MSlive:  The process for evaluating cloud service offerings discussed.  Draft documentation containing background information, scope and timeline are being prepared for presentation to President’s Staff. 

Middlebury’s is one of the first collections to go live in Shared Shelf, which will be released worldwide in July 2011. There are currently 3,143 images in the Middlebury collection, and the collection is growing as we continually add images to support the curriculum.

For more information about Shared Shelf, go to: http://www.artstor.org/shared-shelf/s-html/shared-shelf-home.shtml. To access our collection:

• Go to http://www.artstor.org/index.shtml
• Click “Go”
• Click on “Middlebury Visual Resources” at the bottom.  It is not necessary to log in.

Users can search all ARTstor collections together, or just our local collection. Faculty and students are already enthusiastically using the system and Megan looks forward to demonstrating Shared Shelf’s features at upcoming LIS meetings.

1. Evaluations highlight pilot projects and other ways that we are exploring new ways of delivering service
2. Services, infrastructure, programs highlight those projects that will have the most obvious and direct impact on the community.
3. Strategic planning highlight efforts that are longer-term and more abstract.
4. Organizational development and assessment highlights activities that look at our organizational structure, workflow, communications, and efforts to assess and improve them.

This is the third installment of this document; previous installments can be found here: Spring 2010 and Summer 2010. Items new to the list are marked as new while items that have been removed from list are listed as such at the bottom of the document, as are items that we believe might make their way to the list in the future.

Evaluations

1. cloud-based collaboration We are evaluating cloud-based online services offered by Google, Microsoft, Zoho and others that promote collaboration and information sharing. While vendor-hosted services offer the potential of reduced operating costs, there are security and privacy issues that arise when shifting institutional data from local systems to systems hosted by vendors, and these issues are being studied in detail.
2. segue from segue We are evaluating options for a system or set of connected systems to replace Segue. Details at http://sites.middlebury.edu/segue/
3. ebooks We are running a pilot project this fall to investigate the utility of providing our patrons with ebooks for reading on laptops.
4. desktop virtualization We will continue our efforts to deploy thin-clients as replacements for desktop computers as a means of saving money, reducing our carbon foot-print, and lowering the management costs of maintaining the hundreds of computers we have on campus.
5. banner document management system and workflow We will be working with various offices on campus to identify pilot projects to work with us to replace paper-based processes with paperless processes using the banner document management system (formerly known as xtender.)
6. next generation discovery tools We are exploring options for improving access to scholarly materials that we license but are not easily found through our catalog interface. New

Services, infrastructure, programs

1. wireless improvements We are continuing to work to improve the performance and reach of the wireless network.
2. music library plan We are developing a plan for moving the music library into the main library as a means of consolidating collections and having more of our staff working in the same building.
3. information literacy plan As part of the reaccreditation process, we are looking at how we approach information and technical literacy and its integration into the curriculum, with an eye towards developing a proposal for how we can collaborate with faculty and others to achieve these goals.
4. identity management As part of our overall efforts to have systems that provide access to our services based on roles within the College, we are evaluating systems that allow this information to be stored in an ‘identity vault’ that our systems can check in order to decide what sort of access to provide to an individual.
5. printer consolidation/management We are doing an inventory of printers and copiers on campus as part of a project to reduce the number of devices on our network to save money and to reduce our carbon footprint.

Strategic Planning

1. strategic plan website We are posting to the web our strategic planning process that lists out our priorities, goals, projects, and our progress in achieving these results. See https://sites.google.com/a/middlebury.edu/lis-strategic-planning/home
2. finalizing and tracking goals As part of our overall strategic planning process, we are developing a set of short-term (18 months) goals; this activity will be completed in time for the development of the FY11-12 budget.
3. multi-year budget for capital and operating budgets We are developing a multi-year budget to support our strategic plan and our on-going operational commitments. This budget links our capital and operating needs, and will ensure that we don’t take on projects for which we don’t have the necessary on-going financial resources to maintain.
4. prioritization process We are looking at the process that we use within LIS to set priorities at both a micro and macro level as a means of making sure that we have in place effective governance structures, and that our internal prioritization maps onto the priorities of the College.
5. administrative systems roadmap We have created a ‘roadmap’ for our administrative systems to allow us to plan and budget for the next two or three years. It lays out both the maintenance work that we do regularly, and also new initiatives that we might pursue. You can see a draft of this at https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Am_gidnwMP9TdHNJbXBaNE4xTmllQ0V… . New
6. business continuity & disaster recovery planning We are continuing develop a formalized information systems disaster recovery plan, including the documentation of critical business processes and policies, and associated recovery procedures and responsibilities.

Organizational Development and Assessment

1. reaccreditation As part of the campus-wide reaccreditation committee, we are preparing a section of the reaccreditation report having to do with library and technology resources.
2. communications We are looking at how we communicate both internally within LIS and to the rest of the Middlebury community with an eye towards improving the way we inform ourselves and our constituents about what is going on.
3. assessment We are establishing a schedule for a regular assessment of our major services. The first set of services to be assessed will be desktop support, interlibrary loan, and backup/storage.
4. next generation staffing and services Having completed our staffing plan and begun the process of hiring new staff, we now need to focus our attention on the training and orientation of our newest members of LIS, planning for the professional development needs of all of our staff as they transition to new roles and responsibilities and new support needs, and revisiting our ‘not to do’ list process to make sure that the decisions we made remain the right decisions.
5. assessment of integration of technology and library services with MIIS We will document the systems that we support for MIIS, the systems that MIIS continues to operate on their own, the policies, procedures, and service level agreements that exist, and the policies, procedures, and service level agreements that need to be developed. We will also work to develop processes for planning and budgeting for the evolution of our systems. New

Items Removed From This List (And Why We Removed Them)

1. efficiency through technology taskforce We are leading a campus-wide effort to look at how the College might operate more efficiently through the more effective use of technology.
   This project is on hold while we sort out the administrative systems roadmap and the banner/web prioritization work.
2. open access We are planning a campus-wide conversation about open access to begin this fall that we hope will lead to the faculty considering open access legislation that will encourage if not insist on faculty making their publications available through an open repository.
   The Faculty LIS Advisory Committee decided to defer a year before pursuing this project, although it does remind faculty that they can always pursue open access options for their publications on their own.
3. course catalog In collaboration with the Dean of Curriculum and the Registrar, we are developing a more interactive version of the online course catalog, and a simplified version of the printed catalog.
   This first version of this project is now complete. See http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/catalog/coursecatalog
4. data warehouse evaluation We are exploring options for providing access to institutional data through a ‘data warehouse’ that provides a simplified view into Banner and other data to make reporting and analysis easier to do.

A campus-wide survey of key users of such a system revealed that this is not a high priority for the time being; we are focusing our efforts instead on workflow and imaging.

On the Horizon

Here are items that we anticipate making their way to this list in the coming months; we welcome suggestions about what we might include on this list, what shouldn’t be on this list, and which items on this list should make their way to our focus list.

1. Communications Plan We need to evaluate the effectiveness of the various ways that we communicate internally within LIS and to the rest of the Middlebury community, and if we discover gaps or issues, make improvements.
2. R&D/Innovations We need to build into our planning processes space for research and development, experimentation, and innovation in order to ensure that we are informed about new opportunities afforded by emerging technologies, formats, and delivery methods.
3. Support for mobile devices With the proliferation of iPhones, android phones, iPads, and other more mobile devices, we need to develop a strategy for providing services for these new platforms.
4. Capture A capture technologies initiative could seek to disseminate methods for capturing audio, video and computer screen interactions, as well as methods for editing, cataloguing and sharing this material. Such an initiative could engage the college community in a discussion of the implications of capture technologies, such as:

• When and where their use is appropriate How to obtain permission to capture events and the expressions of others
• How to credit those whose expressions have been captured
• How to clarify the degree of editing that has been done to captured material
• How individuals can review what has been captured of themselves as a basis for improving their own teaching, learning and research.

Uses of captured activities/events could include:

• Screencasts for technology documentation/dissemination
• Lecture recordings for student review
• Meeting recordings for participant review
• Presentation recordings for later dissemination
• Code versioning systems for capturing changes in codebases as part of change management

There are a number of programs of study already using capture. Integrating web-based capture tools (see: Kaltura open source video) into some of our platforms such as WordPress and Drupal could enable a lot more…

…… what else? Let us know. Send Mike Roy an email at mdroy@middlebury.edu .