Monday, Jan 24 is Chris Tangora’s first day in LIS. Chris is coming from UNC Charlotte and is taking the position of Senior Technology Specialist. He’ll be working closely with Brian Foley on supporting academic computing, as well as providing higher level Helpdesk services. We are very excited to have him on board.
Please join me in welcoming Chris to the Middlebury family!
The new Helpdesk website (go/helpdesk) is live. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to find the information you need. We hope to accomplish this with:
If you have go shortcuts or bookmarks to pages on our site, they may no longer work. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, or just have comments about the new site, let us know. We want to make your experience on our site as enjoyable as possible.
There have been some changes in the Helpdesk structure that I would like to make you aware of. First, after managing the Helpdesk for over two years, Jim Beauchemin is taking a break from management and stepping into a Senior Technology Specialist role. Jim will join the team of Nate Burt, Mack Roark, Brian Foley, Lisa Terrier and Chris Tangora (who will join LIS in January). Each of the Senior Technology Specialists takes a leadership role at the Helpdesk and shares the duties of working with users in Service Requests, or second tier support. This is the group that takes on the issues that cannot be resolved during the initial phone call, walk in visit or email. In addition, each has unique projects for which they are responsible. Jim has had a tremendous impact on our complex equipment inventory and distribution process, and he will continue to shepherd those important functions, as well as continuing as a system administrator for Heat. Jim will continue to bring leadership and his excellent process management skills to the Helpdesk.
I will be assuming the management of the Senior Technology Specialist group and Service Requests, in addition to my role as Area Director for User Services.
Joe Durante, who joined LIS last year, has been supervising the Student Consultants who work at the Helpdesk. I am delighted to announce that Joe has been promoted to Helpdesk Manager – Call Center and Walk-in. Joe will manage the staff who receive initial Helpdesk calls, emails and walk in visits and resolve as many as possible during that initial contact. Joe will also continue to lead and build our Student Consultant team. Joe brings strong management experience to the management team of User Services, and I am so happy to have him in that group.
We are currently recruiting applications for the open Senior Technology Specialist position recently vacated by Dennis Hadley, and so will continue to see the team grow and evolve.
Please join me in congratulating Jim and Joe on their new roles.
Need some seasonal music for a gathering? Come to the music library and check out recordings, scores or even a video. To find those items use this handy guide.
The Davis Family Library will be providing extended hours during the last week of classes and the exam period.
24/7 hours started at 9 am on Sunday, 11/28 and will end at 8 pm on Saturday, 12/11. Bring your ID – card access required between 11 pm and 8 am (9 am on Saturday and Sunday). Guest passwords for computer access will not be issued between the hours of 11 pm and 8 am.
Check here for up to date hours at all Libraries.
Last Saturday, the Middlebury Board of Trustees approved a project to relocate the Music Library from the Mahaney Center for the Arts (MCFA) into the Davis Family Library, moving the History of Art and Architecture Department into the vacated music library space. This project is scheduled to begin next June, with completion hopefully by September.
Telephone Services recently installed a new voice over IP telephone system at the Middlebury College Snow Bowl. It is an Aastra MX-One Lite telephony server which integrates fully to the main campus Aastra (Ericsson) phone system. Next time you need to call the Bowl just dial SNOW (7669).
Our local contractor, Business Telephone Systems, working with our telephone system vendor, Black Box Network Services, installed the new server and phones in late September. We are using the existing campus fiber network that was connected to the Bowl in the spring of 2009. Howie McCausland and I tested the voice quality over the fiber with the vendor this past August. Our network passed the test with flying colors.
The Snow Bowl now has a combination of IP phones in the offices and analog lines elsewhere. The two major requirements for the new system were that it had enough analog trunk lines to accommodate the telephones at the lift load and unload stations and that the system not need dedicated bandwidth on the fiber. A POE switch was installed to keep the IP phones going during a power outage, and in the event of a network outage the phones will failover to one of the four telephone company analog trunks remaining.