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.

We are testing a new procedure this spring to improve internal workflow and availability of media scheduled for film screening support.

Films that are scheduled to be screened by Media Services staff will be set aside the morning of the screening by Main Circ staff – after cleaning, repairing (if needed) and verifying availability.
On the day of a scheduled screening, films may not be borrowed prior to the screening.
Students may borrow films immediately after a screening, or on any day prior to the day of the scheduled screening, and regular reserve loan guidelines apply.

This only applies to films that are listed in the daily Media Services screening schedule. Films are listed in the daily film screening schedule only when a faculty member requests that Media Services staff provide technical support to a class screening.
This change does not apply to films that faculty members will be screening themselves.

There were no problems noted with this change during Winter Term trial, and initial feedback from Circ staff and student employees at the front desk has been positive.

Please pass along questions and concerns.
Elin

The 78^th Annual conference of the Music Library Association was held February 18-22, 2009 in Chicago. Below are brief highlights from the Sessions I attended.

Music in Chicago

Blues and Gospel music:

Horace Maxile: The southern migration of blacks to Chicago in the early 1900s helped produce a unique more sophisticated sound than New Orleans Jazz, with and intermingling of Blues and Gospel music. Some of the important figures in that amalgamation were Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Minnie, Thomas Dorsey and Roberta Martin.

Paul Tyler: Folk music in Chicago – local music making rather than music consumption. The German beer gardens provided a venue in the late 1800s for Sunday afternoon music making and social activities. Tyler pointed out that the Sunday blue laws that prohibited the serving of alcohol and closed many businesses were instituted by the Anglo population and temperance movements against “immigrants”. German marshal music was used in a protest of the closing of these Sunday afternoon venues. In the radio era, Chicago station WLS promoted music through the “National Barndance” – a precursor and model for the Grand Old Oprey. The ethnic population originally from Eastern Europe made Chicago a major source for Polka music, with a distinct style. Chicago was also a center of Irish traditional music as well.

Charles Matlock: Described house music – the sound and synthesizer dance music that evolved in Chicago after the closing of disco clubs.

Consortial Collection Development

Tri-colleges – Haverford, Swarthmore, and Bryn Mawr have instituted a joint online catalog and consortial collection development policy using a joint approval plan from YBP and scores notification through Harrassowitz. They have mostly eliminated duplication, except for reference books. But these three institutions are within a ten mile radius of each other, and have a twice daily currier delivery – student requests are mostly filled the same day an item is ordered.

ILSO – an Illinois based statewide consortium which includes remote borrowing, and grants to smaller institutions to develop specific, mostly digital collections available to all the institutions in the consortium.

American Women (Women in music roundtable) – Described the lives and music of Blythe Owen and Victoria Spivey

Alexander Street breakfast – product update. Talk from Jim Musselman, founder of Appleseed Recordings.

Copyright: Is there a chance for change? This session was upbeat – as the legislative committee of MLA sees movement for change in the policy of pre-1972 recordings, to allow digitization and streaming of historic recordings produced between 1890-1964. Currently only 14% of this oeuvre has been reissued. The other major issue – orphan works also has legislation pending with will ease restrictions and standardize the process for “due diligence” in trying to locate a current owner of a copyright.

NextGen Catalogs and Weeding an LP Collection (Small Academic Libraries Roundtable) Sarah Canino of Vassar presented a list of points to ask vendors when considering the acquisition of a NextGen catalog (or discovery tool). Several librarians whose institutions had moved to this technology also discussed some of the problems with these search interfaces as they are currently configured. I described the LP de-acquisition process here at Midd, and included information about perimeters from a small survey I conducted on MLA-L, information from MLA-L archives, and a forthcoming Notes article by Elizabeth Cox. (Sarah and I are co-chairs of this roundtable)

Search, Hack, Mix, Create, Innovate, Communicate: Technology Solutions for Music Libraries – The session title was the draw. Misti Shaw demonstrated a software tool Camtasia, which she used to create library videos. Tom Pease of LC demonstrated an online collaborative program – Yahoo Orchestra Library. Tim Sestrick of Gettysburg College demonstrated del.icio.us. He mentioned that Pandora is the most popular music site tagged in del.icio.us. Jenny Colvin of Furman Univ. talked about widgets and demonstrated meebo. Jon Haupt , Southern Methodist University showed Twitter. Gerry Szymanski demonstrated Cha-cha a question answering service – that won’t replace our jobs, since the answers given are not always either complete or accurate.

Collections and Digitization. – Northwestern University is the repository of the correspondence and scores that John Cage collected in conjunction with editing his book Notations. Jennifer Ward described the process for preserving the scores – which run the gambit from conventional music notation to objects with directions on how to play the piece. Most of the scores are still under copyright – so they aren’t digitizing that collection yet, but they are in the process of digitizing the correspondence. Sam Brylawski and David Seubert described the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings (http://victor.library.ucsb.edu/), an online index to the master and published recordings of the Victor Talking Maching Company beginning in 1900.

Joint Projects – Kathy Abromeit of Oberlin College, described the project of collaborating with Sing Out! Magazine to create an online index to folk song collections in anthologies (http://www.oberlin.edu/library/con/singout.html)

Darwin Scott (formerly of Brandeis) and Pam Bristah of Wellesley, described some of the music related items that have been scanned for the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/details/texts)

What’s Next? The Compact Disc as a Viable Format in the Future of Music Libraries – This topic was discussed from various points of view – a young concert violinist, a former president of the American Orchestra League, a president of a small recording company (Cedille Records) the VP of Digital Product Strategy of Universal Music Group and a music librarian. They all agreed that at least for the near future, the tangible artifact – a CD – will continue to be produced, once broadband is expanded so that music can be streamed in full band with, iTunes and other such services will supplant the CD – a process which will probably take place over the next 10 years or so.

Users and Technology – Kristen Dougan of the University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana described the music content contained in Google Books and the Open Content Alliance – there was some overlap of this session with the one on the OCA the afternoon before. Andrew Justice talked about our users and suggested reading “Born Digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives” to better understand their use of libraries.

Miscellaneous Bits & Pieces: Traditional and Virtual – Philip Ponella of Indiana University described the software they use to stream music. Terry Simpkins send out an invitation to attend a Webinar on this software.

Hot Topics in Music Librarianship – A lively question and answer discussion on the issues facing us – including current budgetary concerns.

The cost of replacing library materials has gone up.
After careful consideration and collaboration between Collections Management and Circulation Services, we have updated default replacement values to match the increased cost of replacing lost or damaged library materials.
Please note that effective March 1, 2009, the following changes will be in effect:
Books (including ILL and NEXpress), Music scores, Gov Docs – $100
Media – $40
Browsing Collection Books – $30
Equipment – $25-$2000, depending on the item
Default replacement values include a processing fee of $20

Are you an artist or crafter?
Do you have any artistic and creative pursuits you would be interested in exhibiting?
So far LIS staff artists and crafters have expressed interest in exhibiting photography, painting, quilting, lacework, knitting, and other fiber arts.
Are you a potter, painter, sculptor, knitter, calligrapher or weaver?
Please consider sharing your work with others in LIS and across campus.
Contact Elin Waagen if you are interested.

NITLE now conveniently posts their monthly updates on the web (albeit as a .pdf). You can find this month’s installment, including a link to a session I’ll be facilitating (with Bob Keift from Occidental)  at the NITLE Summite, at http://tinyurl.com/NITLE-Liaisons-Update-Feb2609.

– mike

Brian Mathews, who blogs at The Ubiquitous Librarian, has an interesting post this week about copyrighted, scholarly library material circulating sub rosa.

The Terra Project is a virtual state simulation run by Professor Quinn Mecham of Middlebury College, hosted in the online virtual world Second Life. Citizens of the Terra Project log in to Second Life in order to run for office, vote, make and enforce policy, and perform other functions of government, all within a virtual environment. This simulation is currently in its second iteration as part of Professor Mecham’s Spring 09′ PSCI 0103 introductory course.

The Terra Project is now open to all interested members of the Middlebury college community! This issue was voted upon by the citizens of Terra during the fall term and was passed as part of the first ammendment to the constitution of Terra. For more information on the constitutional referendum and other pieces of legislature passed during the fall term please check out the Terra Project site.

Second Life users can find the Terra Project on Middlebury’s hosted land by following this SLurl (Second Life url).

Bread Loaf School of English-hiking trip in 1929