Michael Lynch

Posts by Michael Lynch

 
 
 

Problems with wireless?

Categories: LIS Staff Interest, Middlebury Community Interest

There are just under 600 wireless access points (WAPs) in buildings across the main Middlebury campus, in college-owned buildings in town (e.g. Marble Works and the old Court House), as well as at the Breadloaf campus and the Snow Bowl.  The demands for robust, ubiquitous wireless service have increased dramatically in recent years, and the sheer number and variety of devices accessing our wireless infrastructure can present challenges to both our budget and our Help Desk staff.

As LIS plans to improve and expand wireless coverage to meet these demands, we are seeking help from the community.  If you are aware of a particular area where the wireless service seems consistently sub-optimal, please use this form (Login required) to report it to us.  (Note: if you experience problems with wireless access in multiple buildings, please see the LIS Wireless Troubleshooting page.)

This new form is not a substitute for the Help Desk; you should continue to report specific problems to them.  We may not personally respond to every problem reported via this form, but we will definitely use this information, in conjunction with other tools, to identify under-served areas of the campus as we plan improvements in our wireless services.

Friday Links – April 19, 2013

Categories: LIS Staff Interest, Middlebury Community Interest

Meet the First Digital Generation. Now Get Ready to Play by Their Rules.  By Jerry Adler, via Wired Magazine.  I found this to be a fascinating description of “the roughly 4 million Americans born in 1993.”  Adler notes that “Each generation imagines itself as rebellious and iconoclastic. But none before has felt as free to call bullshit on conventional wisdom, backed by a trillion pages of information on the web and with the power of the Internet to broadcast their opinions.”  If you do read it, stick it out for the happy ending!

Friday links – March 15, 2013

Categories: LIS Staff Interest, Middlebury Community Interest

PBS: Will 3D Printing Change the World? (via Stephen Abram)  See also, the 3Doodler Kickstarter project — a 3D printing pen!

Google Reader R.I.P.! (although not until July 1, 2013). Lifehacker offers alternatives to organize and sort your RSS news feeds.

Friday Links, Feb. 22, 2013

Categories: LIS Staff Interest, Middlebury Community Interest

Got MOOCs?  Here are two recent pieces I found interesting:

The first is from Wired: Beyond the Buzz, Where Are MOOCs Really Going? by Michael Horn and Clayton Christensen.  “We believe they are likely to evolve into a scale business, one that relies on the technology and data backbone of the medium to optimize and individualize learning opportunities for millions of students. This is very different than simply putting a video of a professor lecturing online.”

The second is The Trouble With Online College from the New York Times and takes perhaps a less optimistic view. “Courses delivered solely online may be fine for highly skilled, highly motivated people, but they are inappropriate for struggling students who make up a significant portion of college enrollment and who need close contact with instructors to succeed.”

Friday Links, Feb. 8, 2013

Categories: LIS Staff Interest, Middlebury Community Interest

Worldometers: Real Time World Indicators
Watch the numbers change. Everything from current world population, CO2 emissions, to blog posts written today (hope they caught this one).  Strange, but no mention of the number of McDonald’s burgers sold?

The new library of Babel? Borges, digitisation and the myth of a universal library, by Christopher Rowe.  via First Monday.

Friday Links, January 25, 2013

Categories: LIS Staff Interest, Middlebury Community Interest

How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture (via New York Times)

As a #PDFtribute to Aaron Swartz, O’Reilly Media is posting their Open Government book files for free for anyone to download, read and share.  The book asks the question, in a world where web services can make real-time data accessible to anyone, how can the government leverage this openness to improve its operations and increase citizen participation and awareness?  (via Slashdot.)

 

Friday Links January 11, 2013

Categories: LIS Staff Interest

River Falls (Wisconsin) Public Library’s motorcycle exhibit.  “That’s a Fine Motorbike” opened last month in the downstairs exhibit area of the River Falls Public Library. The exhibition runs through Jan. 27.

 

Friday Links December 21, 2012

Categories: LIS Staff Interest, Middlebury Community Interest

The Harvard Labrary: A Design Experiment in Library Futures Since November, the Harvard Labrary — a temporary ‘pop-up’ space in an empty storefront in the middle of Harvard Square—has been a public gallery for design student projects on the future of libraries.