During the next week, you may spot lots of activity as several us move to new office locations:

Jeff Rehbach: Voter 223  (Tom’s former office)
Ron McKinnon: Voter 206  (Chris’s former office)
Chris Norris: LIB 114  (Ron’s former office)
Joe Antonioli: LIB 202C (Jeff’s former office)
Alex Chapin: LIB 213 (Joe’s former office)
Ian McBride: LIB 132 (share with Adam Franco & Travis Stafford)
Travis Stafford: LIB 132 (share with Ian and Adam)

We finally restored network services (interrupted over Holiday Break when a snowplow damaged a fiber cable) to the Marble Works (Vermont Campus Compact) and the Stone Mill.  Technicians from Business Telephone Systems, our cable contractor, worked long hours in cold wind splicing numerous hair-thin strands of glass to complete the repair:

April 24th from 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm

Open to all library staff, trustees, friends, and other interested parties.

Visit the NELINET Event Details for more information:  https://www.nelinet.net/eaccount/EventDetail.aspx?eventid=00000948

Contact C&SL Section President Larraby Fellows to RSVP and to get login information. larraby.fellows@ccv.edu

Our new Library has been in use for almost five years and still draws many visitors and requests for tours. This past week, Amara Lakhous, writer and freelance journalist, and film maker from Italy was our guest. Mr. Lakhous, with a translator, was traveling under the auspices of the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program. His novel, Scontro de Civilta, which won the prestigious Flaiano prize, is a story of how immigrants such as Muslims, Eastern Europeans, and Filipinos, deal with personal identity crises while living in Rome. It was published in Arabic in 2003, Italian in 2006, French in 2007, Dutch and English in 2008, and is currently beiing made into a film. He is known through his novels, journalism, and film making as one of Italy’s most insightful cultural mediators.

While at Middlebury, Mr. Lakhouse met with students and faculty in the Italian Department about his work, gave a lecture on Islam and immigration in Italy, and met with Jay Parini.

Scronto di Civilta has been ordered for our collection.

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.

On Wednesday morning, April 15 Hans will do a presentation at 9 am in room 105 for any staff members who would like to find out more about both printed and online information resources available from federal government agencies, from the CIA to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.  This will be an opportunity to see some of the oldest and most interesting government publications we received early in the 1800′s to the some of the most useful websites created by various federal agencies.  The U. S. government is the largest publisher in the world and government agencies quickly took advantage of the potential of the Web to make their services and information resources more widely available.   Potential future developments will be discussed, along with their implications for our role as one of seven federal depository libraries in Vermont.

Federal website of the month:   http://recovery.gov