Agenda:
1. Liaison Program Assessment – Carrie Macfarlane (addressed)
2. Curricular Technology Stats & Future Directions – Joe Antonioli (addressed)
3. Ebooks Stats & Strategies – Rebekah Irwin (tabled to a J-term optional meeting)
4. Digital Scholarship/Digital Humanities Update – Rebekah Irwin (tabled to a J-term optional meeting)
5. Information Literacy Update – Carrie Macfarlane (tabled TBA)
6. Collection Management Standing Orders & Subscriptions Review – Rebekah Irwin (tabled TBA)

1. Liaison Program Assessment – Carrie Macfarlane

A. the assessment is a multi-year project; further, we are still under-staffed, and so this year we are focusing on communication to/with faculty

B. reiterating a point made in the previous meeting: liaisons are most important to faculty when they don’t know who in LIS to contact for a question, issue, or task, though not all communication must go through liaisons if a faculty member already knows who the best person is to help them, though they may also want to keep their liaison in the loop

C. faculty have told us in the past brief email updates from liaisons work best–continued agreement with this from faculty around the table

D. Carrie asked “What do faculty most need to know from LIS?” and mentioned there are no new surveys of faculty planned, as we already have various data from MISO & others done in the past couple of years.
–Mary Ellen: help with, information, and sharing opportunities concerning Moodle. Because the Moodle system is closed, unlike Segue, faculty cannot see what other faculty are doing with the software without being added to classes. It’s harder to share innovation and efficient tips with each other; liaisons should facilitate help with this. Last year, Mary Ellen expressed interest in an online Moodle discussion group; the tool we suggested in response didn’t meet her needs; Carrie will follow up.
–Louisa: agreed with above, wondered if LIS can help facilitate online discussions of how faculty are using/can get the most out of Moodle & WordPress.
–Ellie: agreed with above, expressed satisfaction with her liaison (Steve Bertolino) in providing timely and helpful service even with random questions
–Louisa: would like to see more updates on library collections, and how the collection is growing and being directed for growth. Rebekah responded by giving a brief explanation of the Approval Plan used to guide collection development, and urged faculty to, if they see certain publishers as crucial for their teaching or scholarship and we don’t have many of their volumes, to get in touch with herself or their liaison to suggest adding publishers to the Approval Plan
–Stefano asked if faculty find themselves borrowing a certain volume or type of volume repeatedly from NExpress or ILL, could they order it or work with their liaison to develop the collection in that field. Rebekah and Terry both affirmed that this is encouraged.
–Holly said she sends seniors in regularly for consultations.
–Holly noted that the questions she doesn’t find herself asking are related to the Helpdesk, because she’s generally been frustrated with delayed or insufficient help she and her students have received there historically – the rest of the faculty around the table concurred.
–Holly wondered how much liaisons could assist with exploring new software for curricular technology and lamented how the Curricular Technologist position formerly held by Alex Chapin has still not been filled – Louisa and Ellie concurred. Lynda.com was cited by faculty as a useful learning tool. Mary Ellen asked for an update on the job search for that position and Terry responded.
–This led into a side discussion involving Terry sharing briefly about some of the MISO survey findings: that faculty’s highest general LIS concerns included fixing computer problems, backing up data, interest in graphics software packages, information security, and copyright concerns. He asked if the assembled faculty agreed with those concerns. Ellie, Holly, Louisa, and Stefano all expressed anxiety concerning what they described as “run-around” at the Helpdesk generally and frequent service that was not prompt or efficient. In particular there was frustration at issues relating to their laptops needing to be reimaged or updated and these processes taking more than a day to accomplish, which greatly affects their teaching as they use their laptops every day to teach. Concerns were expressed by the faculty generally that the loaner laptops in Circulation are not a helpful solution due to their age, their slowness, short battery life (age again), and not knowing what kind of shape the previous person who checked them out returned them in. An idea was floated that Helpdesk could put together a webpage about “the five most common things that can go wrong with your faculty laptop and how to fix them.” Due to time restraints we didn’t discuss the rest of the MISO concerns.

2. Curricular Technology Stats & Future Directions – Joe Antonioli. Joe shared various stats concerning use of the Course Hub this semester (Fall 2012):

A. 83% of faculty have uploaded something to the Hub. 99% of the students have at least one class with some link on its Course Hub that’s more than the basic catalog and scheduling information. Literally 22 students have a course configuration this fall where none of their courses use the Hub at all.

B. 47% of faculty have added a link to MiddFiles. 85% of students have at least one class with a professor using MiddFiles.
–Mary Ellen asked if that meant almost half of the faculty are still using our oldest in-use curricular technology, which Joe confirmed.

C. 30% of faculty have added a Moodle link. 65% of students have at least one class with a Moodle link.
–Louisa commented that she’s considering using the Course Hub as the focal point for curricular technology for her classes next semester as opposed to Moodle, which she currently uses. Her reasons include a frustration with the layout of Moodle, its aesthetic qualities, and that she feels without a staffer in the Curricular Technologist position, LIS has not been able to move forward with faculty support for Moodle in an acceptable way. The rest of the assembled faculty generally concurred with Louisa’s statement about the Curricular Technologist position. Mary Ellen mentioned that liaisons aren’t able to address “nuanced questions” about Moodle – Louisa added the term “back-end questions” as well – and it’s why a hire in the Curricular Technologist position soon is important.

D. 9% of faculty have added a WordPress link. 21% of students have at least one class with a WordPress link.

E. 30% of faculty have uploaded a syllabus to the Hub. 69% of students have at least one class with an uploaded syllabus.
–Holly brought up the idea of having departmental coordinators upload syllabi for all courses in their department each semester, since they collect syllabi for record-keeping each semester already. LIS staff agreed to look into this.
–Louisa mentioned a technical issue with Moodle: that students can’t easily tell when they’re not logged into the Hub, and if a professor uploads a syllabus but doesn’t make it public, students don’t understand they’re not logged in and that’s why they aren’t seeing it. To deal with this she’s made her syllabi open to public viewing, which she’s not comfortable with as a long-term solution.

F. Joe talked about how LIS will be upgrading to Moodle 2.0 very soon, and will send out a date for the conversion once he knows it. Everything in everyone’s sites will be upgraded automatically and backups will be kept if they are any issues. Very few cosmetic changes will occur as a result of this, but back-end mechanics will run more smoothly.

Attending:  Faculty: Holly Allen (AMST, Co-Chair), Claudio Medeiros (THEATRE), Elizabeth Morrison (for Ellie Bagley, RELI), Louisa Burnham (HIST), Mary Ellen Bertolini (Writing Program/CTLR), Jeff Buettner (MUSIC), Eddie Vazquez (HARC), Ian Sutherland (for Marc Witkin, CLASSICS), Brett Millier (ENAM), Stefano Mula (COMPLIT), Jenn Ponder (DANCE), Matty Woodruff (PHIL) ; LIS: Andy Wentink (Co-Chair), Carrie Macfarlane, Steve Bertolino, Jess Isler, Joy Pile; Absent: Louise Stein (FMMC); Representative from Studio Art (to be appointed)

Meeting was called to order at 12:15 by LIS Co-Chair Andy Wentink, who welcomed the group, reviewed meeting protocols, and requested members to introduce themselves. He announced that there was a change in the agenda. Video Recording/Storage Issues would be discussed first, since Claudio Medeiros, who proposed the agenda item, needed to leave early.

Agenda Items:

1. Video Recording/Storage issues
2. Moodle and Course Hub Implementation
3. LIS/Faculty communications
4. Liaison Program
5. Need for more faculty carrels in library

1. Video Recording/Storage issues

Claudio voiced concern about the organization and storage of performed work by Theatre majors, including senior projects, performances, etc.

• To date, most work has been recorded by faculty or students with equipment within the department, resulting in inconsistent, often poor, quality recordings with limited pedagogical value
• Even with equipment borrowed from Media Services recordings made by Theatre students/staff/faculty with limited experience resulted in poor quality
• What he wants from LIS is: the technical equipment and qualified personnel to create high quality recordings of enduring pedagogical value
• The ability to store, catalog. And provide access (including online delivery) to these resources
• An organizational workflow for scheduling tapings and arranging for professional equipment and qualified staff to operate it
• Other faculty at the meeting agreed with the potential pedagogical value of producing recordings of student work across the curriculum

Jenn Ponder: The Dance Program has developed an efficient workflow for recording procedures; they would be happy to discuss with Theatre (interdepartmental communication)

• Dance has made arrangements with Special Collections for depositing those sections of their archives not currently being used in the curriculum, where they will be cataloged and archived; plans for digitizing these recordings

Andy Wentink: Special Collections already archives Theatre, Dance, FMMC ; SC would be pleased to work out an archiving schedule for analog media recordings; digital files currently are not the purview of SC; at present, MiddMedia is most probably the appropriate place for archiving digital recordings;  will have to check with IT

Other questions raised:

• Method of online delivery of media resources – iTunes–type streaming coming, but not yet available
• How to transfer already existing analog recordings to digital
  • student assistants in DANCE and FMMC currently render this service
  • LIS offers training for faculty/staff/students from digital media tutors

Question of intellectual property/copyright was raised

• Discussion of where fair use ends and copyright infringement begins
• Creating archival copies was discussed: copyrighted analog recordings no longer in any other currently supported formats are transferred to DVD
  • These recordings are available for research and teaching with the proviso that the archival DVDs are used only in the Library, although exceptions to the rule might be considered under extraordinary circumstances
  • Carrie Macfarlane said she would look into this practice and report back to the Group
  • The question was raised regarding limited access (e.g., campus only) not only to the above resources but to student-generated works as well

Conclusions: 1) The discussion confirmed the value of enhanced inter-divisional communication in these Group meetings; 2) the role of LIS in resolving these issues will be raised; 3) these detailed minutes will be reported to FLAC and posted to the Blog for other Divisional Groups to review

2. Moodle and Course Hub Implementation

There was consensus that other than for the Faculty Test Group in the Spring, faculty was not happy with the Moodle/Course Hub implementation process; Faculty felt that they were not given the appropriate tools to implement new course sites in time for the Fall 2011 Semester

Librarians in attendance agreed that the training timeline, complicated by schedule conflicts for faculty and LIS staff,  and that addressing the challenge of training for faculty at different levels of preparedness, was problematic. Faculty was reminded that ongoing Moodle training was available in workshops offered by Alex Chapin and Bryan Carson and in tutorials offered by Lynda.com.  Carrie Macfarlane acknowledged the scheduling challenges.

Question was asked: when would be a good time for training? One complicating factor was the late finalization of the contract with Remote-Learner the Moodle vendor.

3.  LIS/Faculty communications

The above segued into a discussion of LIS/Faculty communications

Mary Ellen Bertolini questioned the efficacy of LIS faculty communication with faculty. There was consensus among the faculty that

• the “language” used by LIS in attempting to reach everyone who needs to be reached;
• faculty are not likely to respond to generic subject lines, e.g., “Updates from LIS”
• Louisa Burnham suggested and others concurred that faculty prefer subject lines that directly address important issues, e.g., “Are you reaching all students in Moodle?” or. “New Research Sources Available”

Mary Ellen Bertolini suggested creating a Moodle listserv to improve communication between LIS and Moodle users. There was wide approval of this recommendation among the group.

Nevertheless, most members of the group agreed that old habits/routines/lines of communication are hard to break, and many still bypass new procedures instituted by LIS and go directly to LIS staff they have worked with over years for LIS updates

4. Liaison Program

A discussion of the efficacy of the Liaison program ensued.

Continuing from the above discussion, Holly Allen initiated a discussion in which there was consensus that faculty appreciate and have had rewarding experiences with the Liaison program, especially in regard to the pedagogical value of librarians providing library orientation and research methods classes for FYSE, Jr. & Sr. thesis students, collection development, course page and, in some cases, syllabus creation.

There was agreement, however, that many faculty members have difficulty understanding the value of the “Primary Liaison” model, especially regarding technology issues, which they see as an impediment to direct and immediate access to expert LIS staff who have proved helpful in the past.

Librarians responded that contacting Primary Liaisons is not mandatory.  Faculty should be aware of these contacts especially for circumstances in which they don’t know whom to contact.

There was a recommendation for Librarians/Primary Liaisons to put other members of Liaison teams on departmental Subject Guides. Librarians recommended in turn, that faculty include their liaisons on their departmental pages

5. Need for more faculty carrels in library

Matty Woodruff raised the following issue:

“There is an urgent need for more faculty carrels in the library. Faculty members are always under pressure to ‘publish or perish.’  The expectations for publishing to get tenure have increased here. Hence the need for faculty members to have library carrels has also increased.

In my experience, a library carrel for a Humanities professor can be as important as a lab is for a Science professor: the essential space for research that leads to publishing that is required for tenure and promotion. A library carrel is far less expensive than a full lab. Yet there is a shortage of faculty carrels in the library and a waiting list of professors trying to get one.

By adding a door to a suite of already existing desks on the upper level of Davis Library, one could efficiently and inexpensively add another room of much needed faculty carrels. I’d be glad to show you what I have in mind.”

There was broad support among faculty for this suggestion.

6. Adjournment

Meeting adjourned at 1:25 p.m.

1. Impact of the current financial crisis and budget cuts on LIS services and resources. (Carol Peddie)

2. Updates and announcements:  LIS and the CTLR are looking for examples of innovative uses of technology to feature in our new Teaching with Technology Blog and to participate in the Pedagogy and Technology Fair next spring. (Shel)

3. Status of new College web site and departmental support.

4. Old items:
a. Final Cut Pro
b. Video storage solution

5. New business

An issue of scheduling concerns the use of Axxinn 105. It is a scheduled lab, non-proprietary digital video editing facility that is controlled by the scheduling office. It is also configured for seminars and sminars that don’t need the video equipment are sometimes scheduled there, precluding use of the video equipment.   It was agreed that it makes sense to give video use top priority in this space.

Item for Consideration: this issue has arisen in different locations on campus, not necessarily for access to video per se, but for computer labs that are scheduled for non-computer purposes. It is a tricky issue but LIS should discuss internally and consult with the Scheduling Office. It would be advantageous to all if Axxin 105 was used as a video space instead of the Wilson Media Lab which is more heavily utilized.

Software needs for the Arts include:  In Design, Photoshop (for graphic design), Final Cut Pro (currently in need of an update), Vectorworks, DVDStudioPro, Lightwright.

There is a great need for a video storage solution. Jennifer Ponder noted that there are students using external hard drives (2 terabytes on Jennifer’s two machines) without backup. An archival system is needed.  This is an issue that it is campus-wide when it comes to video storage for projects in process.

Item for Consideration: LIS should evaluate potential solutions to the needs for video storage while projects are under construction.

The issue of video storage also arose in terms of the accumulated videotapes, DVD’s in Wright Theather that was transferred to Andy Wentink in Special Colections. It was agreed that we need a plan for archiving projects and should consider making them available on line.

Jason Mittell would like a system in whch a student does a video project and it would then be his/her responsibility is to upload it to whatever system is currently in place and decide who has access.  Andy noted that there is a form and process in use for the senior theses  which might appropriate for this situation.   Further, he noted that ContentDM might be a solution since it supports metadata for organizing the content. And in terms of dealing with volume, we may need to investigate some type of system where we weed a digital collection and make only the most recent and highly demanded items available for instantaneous access. The rest would have to be requested.

FMMC:
Jason thinks things have been tumultuous but going well. It was noted that the response rate of Media Services in dealing with classroom issue in Axxinn has been slow. Interestingly,Jennifer reported the opposite.  Looking further into this issue, there have been bad amplifiers in Axxinn that have taken months to get fixed and remain an issue. A further issue is that there are within the building both spaces dedicated to FMMC and maintained and managed by Ethan; and, spaces that are the purview of Media Services and LIS. For the latter, the timeliness of response is not always satisfactory – the example cited was programming the touchpad to change the volume controls in one of the Axxinn classrooms.

Theater:
It was noted that one of the issues for the Theater Dept. is how best to use the music library. The Theater Dept. needs to be aware of and more famliar with the resources that are currently available so that, for example, plays that need to be read for auditions can be made available on reserve.

Currently theatre designers don’t use technology (don’t teach Vector Works), they teach hand drafting. Apparently, the designers rationale is pedagogical and they clearly think that this is the best way to teach.  Alex related that a friend of his in the industry when asked to hire Midd students as interns named Vector Works as one program that students would need to be very familiar with in order to be useful during the internship.

Theater has a reading list of what graduating seniors should read before graduation. It seems that some of the plays are missing.

Item for consideration: Find someone in the library to work with the Theater Dept. to determine what we actually have and what we are missing.

It was also noted that there are features in MiddCat that have not been enabled and are not until requested. How to create lists was one topic in this area.

Some requests for DVD’s have had no response and there seems to be some ambiguity as to how reqests for DVD’s should be make and to whom. Andy noted that these requests should come to him.

Item for consideration: Figure out how best to inform the various departments as to the preferred process for requesting DVD’s.  There was a question as to how new faculty learn about these process – for example, there is a web-based form. Jennifer raised the role of the music library – the dance visual collections are there, theater has plays, etc there – - SHOULD the name of the music library be changed to the performing arts library and should there be a group workshpace there in which theater dande and music students could collaborate on

The division of space in the Center for the Arts is divided up very much by department and there is a lack of common space in which collaborations might be possible. Alex noted that when students were working on a play with live musicians, there was no place in the building that is not so tethered to a specific department that it made this type of collaboration difficult.

Music Library:
Apparently, it is freezing in there – an HVAC problem – heat and air conditioning are often on at the same time. Facilties is aware of the problem but it remains unremedied.
Meeting participants agreed that  it would be worth having discussing what materials should be in the space constrained music library so that the most relevant stuff is located there and not at the Main library.

Jason suggested that it would interesting to do a report on what is being requested to be picked up  in the music library from the main library and vice versa. Can students at the main library request material be delivered from the music library? Judy doubts that this is the case.

The ability to check out hardware: protable LCD’s, hard drives, cameras, iPods, etc. is much appreciated but not everyone is familiar with this service.

Item for consideration: How can LIS better inform different departments as to what services and equipment are available? Theater, for example, did not seemto know that they could borrow equipment from the Circ Desk.

The  question was raised about how the DVD collection is used and maintained in the library by students, faculty and staff needs:

For the Dance department, it was noted that the Dance faculty do not typically come to the main library to look for materials. They try to keep material in the music library so that it is proximal to the department.  The Dance archives in Jennifer’s office include ‘unofficial’ versions, while DVD’s purchases by the College are in the music library.

In Theater, Alex notes that the DVD’s used by his department are primarily in the main library.

Once the collection moved to the new library from Sunderland, the policies that were then in place led to a lot of issues e.g. thousands of DVD’s that are sitting there unwatched. While they can be watched in the library most students and staff would like to be able to borrow from this collection. Question arose as to portential damage to valuable editions.
Item for consideration: Should we make backup copies of DVD’s that are hard to replace

It was suggested that the next meeting  should take place  at the beginning of the semester and demo the new Monterrey web site which will be live. However, it turns out that the next meeting will take place sooner because the web makeover and decommissioning Segue issues are sufficiently urgent to discuss, as are the orientations for First Year Seminars and what topics they should cover.

It was suggested that the next meeting  should take place  at the beginning of the fall semester and demo the new Monterrey web site which will be live. However, it turns out that the next meeting will take place sooner because the web makeover and decommissioning Segue issues are sufficiently urgent to discuss, as are the orientations for First Year Seminars and what topics they should cover.