The Language School task force joined us to discuss their proposal for providing curricular technology support for this summer’s Language School programs. The team asked the ADs to review and approve various proposals, including:
Update curricular platforms documentation

• Minor changes to current documentation will be made as needed;
• Documentation that needs more extensive updating will be marked to alert users;
• CTT will periodically review and revise documentation tagged as being in need of updating;
• Joe A. will look into options for “tagging” [4/27 update - he has identified a couple of appropriate tags to use for this];
• An annual documentation review should be planned; this may be something the Curr Tech Team can assume ongoing responsibility for.

Curricular technology questions, unscheduled

• Joy has met with Mills coordinators and walked them through Moodle and the CourseHub.  Mills coordinators can now “masquerade” as other users to help troubleshoot issues themselves;
• Joe A. has met with Joe D., Linda and Marty to introduce them to the CourseHub and Moodle platforms.
• Vacations may need to be staggered to ensure continuous coverage, especially during the July 4 holiday;
• ADs will ask their managers to balance vacations schedules within their groups.

Curricular technology questions, scheduled.

• The ADs would like to discuss this in a small group setting with support providers;
• Support for this, like most of the other LS tasks, will need to be revisited next year.

Onboarding Workshops for faculty/staff.

• We are hoping support can come from the Ed and Training Team.  Mary will communicate with them about this;
• Bryan will provide a list of skills has has covered in the past when doing this training.

Courseware Workshops for faculty/staff.

• We would like LS bilinguals to shadow LIS staff this year as LIS staff conduct workshops.  We will discuss this idea with coordinators and directors.

Curricular resource site creation

• Bilinguals and faculty who use curricular technology frequently will be asked to place request for site creation needs in advance to allow LIS to assess demands.  At this point, there is no guarantee LIS can fill every request.  Time spent performing this work may limit time available for other, equally important tasks;
• Joe A. is meeting with LS coordinators next Wednesday.  He will set a deadline for LS departments to communicate needs/requests;
• Joe A. noted that a temporary and fairly straightforward means for site creation would be to use our pilot implementation of SANSpace.  The down side to this would be if decided not to move SANSpace into production; we would then need to find another platform suitable for these sites;
• Joe A. will also find out from the coordinators when the bilinguals will be arriving.

Conversations with the team will be continued through email to make sure the appropriate conversations are taking place.

Thanks for reading
Terry & Doreen

Wendy Shook joined us to discuss the draft Data Management Policy she is in the process of preparing.  This is a requirement for grant applications from certain agencies (e.g. National Science Foundation); applications for funding from these agencies require the inclusion of a data management, access, and preservation plan.

The completed policy will outline objectives for science data preservation and storage using a digital on-campus repository, or, where appropriate, pointing researchers to national discipline-specific repositories that may be preferable.  Currently, Biology, Economics, and Psychology are departments at Middlebury that are most likely to need local data hosting/preservation.

Wendy suggested a 2-stage process.  Stage 1 would be a pilot project using ContentDM in conjunction with a subscription to a digital object identifier (DOI) registry. Stage 2 would reassess the platform and determine if migration to another platform would be beneficial.

We agreed that Wendy should investigate costs to subscribe to a DOI registry, and that we should get an estimate that includes MIIS.  There are also unresolved issues around data ownership and rights management, which Mike will try to have added to the Dean’s meeting agenda for next week.  Finally, Chris recommended that an information security audit and disaster recovery assessment be conducted for ContentDM.

The AD Retreat scheduled for April 19th be cancelled since Mike and Carol are both out.

We reviewed the LIS calendar for April, focusing on:

• the 3rd quarter budget: including travel, labor, capital and operational expenses.  Carol reported we are fairly well on target, budget-wise, with not a lot of wiggle room for unanticipated expenses;
• student labor trends.  We have asked workgroup leaders to review student labor trends to see how we are using student dollars; Directors should follow up and nudge managers as necessary;
• BreadLoaf/Language School planning –Carrie Macfarlane is leading a group preparing a report on support for this coming summer.  She expects to be able to submit it to Terry by Monday (4/8), and we will invite her and other group members to attend next week’s Directors’ meeting to discuss.

The Manager’s meeting agenda for the April 11th meeting will include:

• Follow-up discussion on management training, especially thinking about ways to keep the training moving forward and in active use;
• Professional development — Mike would like to try a pilot program where, for 1-2 Fridays/month, we will set aside time to make staff professional development a priority.  This would mean not scheduling meetings, limiting the amount of email we send to one another in LIS, etc., during this time.

The All-staff meeting agenda for the April 17th meeting:

• Staff awards;
• Norm Cushman will give an update on his organization (not confirmed);

The Optional all-staff meeting agenda for April 18th:

• BreadLoaf and Language School Planning (not confirmed).

Carol will re-engage the Space Team to review office space requirements for new staff members.

Mike would like to re-establish the LIS New Staff Member Coffee meetings for the forthcoming plethora of new employees.

The April 11 directors’ meeting is canceled.  We hope to discuss a proposal for LIS Language School support at the 4/18 meeting.

Thanks for reading,
Terry & Doreen.

The Area Directors provide Mike with weekly updates of activities happening within each areas.  Mike asked that, when the directors are out of the office on business travel or vacation, they either delegate someone on their staff to forward updates for posting to Doreen or provide the updates for the missed week upon their return.  He also asked the ADs to highlight topics that may warrant special attention by members of the College administration, or that demand more comprehensive discussion among the leadership team.

All areas appear to be roughly on schedule for the performance reviews.

Mike has been asking managers how long it takes them to prepare submissions for the quarterly update document.  Times estimates run between 20 minutes and 1 ½ hours, depending on level of detail.  Mike feels this process is working well.

The ADs discussed what the nascent Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium (which includes Saint Michaels College, Champlain College and Middlebury) may mean for our purchasing activities.  The Consortium is intended to look for ways to improve college services and find cost savings by acting together in making purchases in supplies, equipment and services.  At the moment, it is focused primarily on general supplies, but may look to broaden in the future.  The discussion focused mainly around what aspects of LIS purchasing might appropriately be considered for inclusion within any agreement between the 3 schools, and which aspects might be specialized for Middlebury’s needs and require a certain level of continued autonomy.

The update and demo of Web Helpdesk on this week’s agenda will be moved to next week.

Thanks for reading.

Terry & Doreen

The Space Team joined us to present an update of their activities:

• Earlier this year, the team presented their recommendations to the ADs for the future use of the information desk in the library atrium.  The team recommended the space be used as an information kiosk with an electronic directory and handout display.  Mike brought this recommendation to the larger campus space committee, which approved $5,000 for an architectural study for FY13-14
• Joseph will coordinate with the architect to develop a design for the kiosk, removing the information desk and incorporating an electronic directory and display for handouts.  He will also have the architect develop a less expensive option, leaving the desk in its current position and repurposing it to include the electronic directory and handouts display.
• We will need to create a small group to work with various service points within the library to develop an electronic directory.
• The space team will also be reviewing office space needs for LIS now that SRC has approved some of our position requests.
• The team will investigate the issue of how to increase student carrel and study spaces within the library.
• We need to think about a long term space study to look at overall use of library space, the utility of installing additional compact shelving to the stacks, etc.  The team agreed to propose a timeline to the ADs.

This week Mike Roy, Chris Norris and Jim Stuart had a preliminary meeting to revisit our overall cloud strategy.  Areas of focus will include:

• Email
• Storage
• Telephone (VoIP)

More at a future meeting.

Dining has requested assistance with project management efforts for their current CBOARD food management system, which tracks food usage and costs.  These project management needs would be temporary; dining staff would maintain the system once up and running.  The current implementation has been used for about 10 years and it needs to be upgraded.  Dining doesn’t have the capability to handle a project this size and asked for our assistance.  We discussed some possibe options, but the project requires further discussion and analysis.

Thanks for reading,
Terry and Doreen

We began with discussing next steps for the policy review process and suggested the following plan outline:

• Create inventory and review policy documents in the handbook for currency, completeness, accuracy, and usefulness.
• Inventory internal LIS policies, with the possibility of a survey to capture missing policies or to review and revise existing policies.
• We discussed ownership of “College” policies that reside within the LIS section of the handbook, but aren’t strictly limited to LIS processes (e.g. copyright, data privacy, etc.)  Does LIS “own” policies because of where they are situated within the handbook?
• We want to focus on policies that are problematic.
• Mike agreed to draft a plan to send to the directors.

We talked briefly about the APS timeline for LIS staff.  HR confirmed that this year’s deadline is officially Mar. 31, 2013.  SInce this falls on a Sunday, we can submit are documents to HR on Monday Apr. 1, 2013.

LIS internal deadlines will be similar to last year:

• Self-evaluations and team 360s are due  to managers by Monday, Feb. 18; a notice of the team evaluation process will go out this week;
• Managers will need to make a recommendations to their director about how their staff members performed by Friday, Mar. 1;
• LIS Directors will communicate decisions regarding ratings back to managers by Friday, Mar. 8;
• Performance reviews should be scheduled during the period between March 11 and March 22;
• Forms should be signed by both staff member and manager and in to Doreen by Monday, Mar. 25;
• All reviews will be signed and delivered to HR by Monday, Apr. 1.

Chris wants to communicate with Google Apps users regarding the discovery of phishing attempts through a design flaw in Google Apps.  Specifically, if you are signed in already but click on a malicious link, the browser displays the URL such that the form appears to be hosted within our Middlebury google apps instance even if it is not.  Mike mentioned that, even generally, a URL showing the Middlebury domain is not an absolute guarantee of legitimacy, since students can create pages and forms as well.  Chris also suggested we restart the discussion about our intentions for Google Apps.

We discussed a new security issue involving phone calls from people falsley claiming to be “Middlebury Support Services”. Public Safety and the Helpdesk have been informed.

Thanks for reading,
Terry

Bill Burger, Vice President for Communications joined us for part of the meeting to introduce himself to the directors.  Each of us described the organizational structure of our area and our team’s responsibilities.  General discussion centered around areas where both LIS and Communications overlap, such as the college website, copyright and events requiring media assistance.

The rest of the meeting was dedicated to addressing the recent security event affecting the campus email system.

Agenda for Jan. 31

• Curricular Tech Team visits (10:00)  – to be rescheduled
• LIS stats (Mike)
• policy summit review/next steps
• finalize 2013 APS timeline

Thanks for reading
Terry & Doreen

As part of our disaster recovery planning efforts, Chris has been interviewing functional areas across campus  to inventory work processes and discuss  contingency planning efforts in the event critical system are not available.  Chris indicated that he may need assistance with this interview process from the ADs.  Once the interviews are done and the data is gathered and stored, the functional areas will be expected to update and maintain their own information on a yearly basis.

On Friday, the ADs will be holding a retreat to discuss budget planning.  A short discussion was held outlining the afternoon’s agenda.

Mike will invite Bill Burger, the new Vice President for Communications to next week’s AD meeting to meet the group.

We talked about some of the MISO Survey results and what our next steps might be to make improvements to our services.  Some suggestions are to:

• Additional data gathering re: public printers on campus, video conferencing and helpdesk.
• Look at the Liaison Program and see how it ties into current and future assessment pieces.
• Make  “wireless” a priority project to help make improvements across campus.  Increase WAPs in residence halls and change out those that are problematic.

We discussed ways to encourage more staff award nominations.  Terry will join the R&R crew as sponsor.  We also briefly discussed ideas for the upcoming in-service day to be held during March break.  Perhaps a security theme, but we can’t tell you about it (just kidding!)…

February’s optional All LIS Staff meeting will be about project prioritization.

We talked about keeping the “Outage & Alerts” page up-to-date on the LIS site.  Mary reminded us that any LIS blog post relating to downtimes, outages, etc., tagged with “Helpdesk Alert” will automatically feed the Outage & Alerts page as well.

Thanks for reading
Terry & Doreen

In advance of meeting, Chris distributed the latest version of the Data Classification Policy for review.  The policy describes various types of data classification (e.g. sensitive) and how they should be handled, but does not discuss policy enforcement.  The Data Classification Taskforce may suggest names of people to serve as “data stewards” within functional areas, but it will be up to the FA to appoint the data steward.

Some suggestions from the ADs were to:

• provide training for data stewards, possibly in conjunction with the Training & Education and Security Teams
• provide training for new employees
• edit the policy to reflect current thinking about how we write policies, e.g., lay out the “why this is important” up front and recast the preamble in plainer language.
• create a timeline listing activities and who will be responsible for these activities

Next Steps:

• Data Classification Taskforce should begin conversations within their areas
• Have this discussion added to the LEADS agenda (possibly February 18th)
• Mike would like to present this to President’s Staff, possibly at their March 2013 meeting

Chris also announced that the PCI Policy (Policy for Accepting Credit Card and eCommerce Payments) has been approved by Patrick Norton and has been posted to the Controller’s website.  An early January email from Patrick to all staff explaining this policy will be sent out.

A brief discussion was held regarding the eNewsletter and how we communicate to the college community.  Should this discussion be to move this to the Communications Taskforce?  Since their current charge is to evaluate internal communications, this could be something to consider in a subsequent phase, either with this group or a new one focusing on external communications.

We made good progress on finalizing Education and Training Team membership.  We still need to have a few conversations with staff before announcing, but stay tuned.

Mike asked the ADs to think about how we can improve our project prioritization practices. An AD meeting in January will be dedicated to this topic.  Specifically:

• how do LIS priorities fit with College priorities
• how do ad hoc projects get integrated into existing planned commitments?
• how do we keep focused on high-level (e.g. data classification, information literacy, SLAs, etc.) issues and make reviewing projects habitual?

Thanks for reading,

Terry & Doreen

Mike provided a summary of his CLIR-CIO meeting in Washington DC.  Some of the topics discussed were:

• MISO survey
• Digital scholarship
• On-line education
• Classroom design
• Quiet zones in the library
• Security
• Organizational structure
• Collection development issues

The Dec. 20th optional all-LIS staff meeting has been canceled.  Happy holidays

Chris led a discussion about next steps regarding our policy review (aka, Policy Summit). We looked at some of Gartner’s recommendations for policy management. After reviewing notes from the Policy Summit meeting and survey results, the following topics stood out:

• Data ownership, privacy, classification
• Education and awareness
• Technology enablers (ie. tools)
• Governance and enforcement

A consolidated list of next steps was generated:

• Inventory all LIS policies and policies that affect LIS
  • What do we have? What’s missing? What’s no longer needed?
  • Where are the policies? When were they last updated? Who is responsible for each policy?
  • Does the policy work? Would it work if it was enforced? How to deal with exceptions?
  • Is it an LIS policy or a College policy (or other, such as a guideline, practice, or procedure)?

• Determine institutional temperature of policy
  • Who should be leading this effort? Who should be involved?
  • Relationship to the data classification taskforce work?
  • What should the priorities be (i.e., currency, legal)?
  • What is the institutional philosophy around policies (e.g., comprehensive, prescribed? simple, broadly worded?

Chris reported that the final draft of the Data Classification Policy (created by the Data Classification Taskforce) has been completed. A review of this draft will be added to next week’s AD agenda for further discussion.

Chris has contacted Donna McDurfee, who sends out yearly update notifications on handbook policies, to request a spreadsheet containing an inventory of the current policies as a starting point.

Discussion touched the issue of which policies (vs., for example, guidelines or procedures) to prioritize.  There was at least some sentiment to focus on policies with an element of enforcement to them (as opposed to, for example, something like the library gift policy that mainly provides guidance to staff as well as donors).

A second round of Policy Summit discussions will continue during the January Optional All-Staff meeting on January 17th.

The ADs discussed whether the LIS Strategic Directions need to be updated.  It has been several years since the last revision. Sentiment varied as to whether we have the time, and whether it is worth the effort, to engage in this now.

Thanks for reading,
Terry & Doreen

Mike provided a summary of his CLIR-CIO meeting in Washington DC.  Some of the topics discussed were:

• MISO survey
• Digital scholarship
• On-line education
• Classroom design
• Quiet zones in the library
• Security
• Organizational structure
• Collection development issues

The Dec. 20th optional all-LIS staff meeting has been canceled.  Happy holidays

Chris led a discussion about next steps regarding our policy review (aka, Policy Summit). We looked at some of Gartner’s recommendations for policy management. After reviewing notes from the Policy Summit meeting and survey results, the following topics stood out:

• Data ownership, privacy, classification
• Education and awareness
• Technology enablers (ie. tools)
• Governance and enforcement

A consolidated list of next steps was generated:

• Inventory all LIS policies and policies that affect LIS
  • What do we have? What’s missing? What’s no longer needed? – Chris has contacted Donna McDurfee, who sends out yearly update notifications on handbook policies, to request a spreadsheet containing an inventory of the current policies as a starting point.
  • Where are the policies? When were they last updated? Who is responsible for each policy?
  • Does the policy work? Would it work if it was enforced? How to deal with exceptions?
  • Is it an LIS policy or a College policy (or other, such as a guideline, practice, or procedure)?

• Determine institutional temperature of policy creation
  • Who should be leading this effort? Who should be involved?
  • Relationship to the data classification taskforce work?
  • What should the priorities be (i.e., currency, legal)?
  • What is the institutional philosophy around policies (e.g., comprehensive, prescribed? simple, broadly worded?

Chris reported that the latest draft of the Data Classification Policy (created by the Data Classification Taskforce) has been completed. A review of this draft will be added to next week’s AD agenda for further discussion.

Our discussion touched the issue of which policies (versus, for example, guidelines or procedures) to prioritize/focus.  There was at least some sentiment to focus on policies with an element of enforcement to them (as opposed to, for example, something like the library gift policy that mainly provides guidance to staff as well as donors).

A second round of Policy Summit discussions will continue during the January optional all-staff meeting on January 17th.

The ADs discussed whether the LIS Strategic Directions need to be updated (please… hold your applause).  It has been several years since the last revision.  Sentiment varied as to whether we have the time, and whether it is worth the effort, to engage in this now.  We will continue to poke at this.

Thanks for reading,
Terry & Doreen