This workshop, led by Anne Knowles (Geography Dept.), will explore principles and practices of spatial thinking, visualization, and research design for working with visual sources and methods in the digital humanities and social sciences. Examples will come from faculty and student research on the geographies of the Holocaust, the battle of Gettysburg, and other projects. We will also brainstorm around participants’ goals and ideas for incorporating spatial and visual approaches into their research and teaching.

If you wish to participate, please email Anne (aknowles@middlebury.edu). Maximum 12 participants. Please identify yourself as faculty or staff, as we are aiming for a balance across the range of interests on campus.

Audrey LaRock from the Language Schools was the winner in this year’s United Way raffle. As April approaches, we are trying to wrap up this year’s College United Way Campaign. You can still make a contribution via the on-line form at https://web.middlebury.edu/forms/unitedway/index.php . To date, 140 individuals or families have pledged nearly $95,000. Last year, 180 individuals or families pledged just over $100,000. We hope to improve on both the amount pledged and the number of faculty and staff participating. If you haven’t yet done so, please consider contributing to this important cause. The United Way plays a critical role in providing resources where they are most needed in Addison County. You can learn more about the United Way of Addison County and how your contribution can make an impact in the community, by looking at their website at http://www.unitedwayaddisoncounty.org/ .

We’ve just posted the LIS Quarterly Update for your reading pleasure. We’ve shrunk it down (it’s a mere 11 pages!) and generally re-organized it to make it easier to skim quickly. As always, I would love to hear more about how we can make this report useful as a communication and planning tool, and also what we can do to make the process of producing it as simple as possible.

We’ve just launched an on-line discussion board at http://go.middlebury.edu/discuss  . The goal of this project is to find out whether or not an on-line forum will meet a need on campus that is presently not being met by Facebook, Midd Confessional, and Twitter on the one hand, and MiddNotes, the Campus Events Calendar, and the Portal on the other.

The discussion board is a very simple utility where you can post a topic, respond to a topic, and respond to a response. You can add profile information about yourself, including an image, and links to your on-line persona. We’ve created a thread to discuss the discussion board, and hope that students will take time to let us know whether or not this effort will address some of the gaps they have described in the communication platforms currently on offer at the College.

An FAQ on the details of how the forum works is available for those who want to learn more about how to post.

 

NITLE is hosting an on-line presentation on September 12 from 4-5 p.m. The topic is “Blended Learning in a Liberal Arts Setting” and will feature the work being done as part of the Next Generation Learning Challenges grant that Middlebury is participating in, and is being led by Bryn Mawr. More information on the presentation can be found at http://www.nitle.org/live/events/142-blended-learning-in-a-liberal-arts-setting . You can watch it from your own computer if you sign-up, or you can join us in Library 145.

We in LIS spent time this summer reviewing what we accomplished this spring, and planning for the upcoming semester and year. The results of this are reflected in the attached .pdf , which is the latest edition of the LIS quarterly update. You can expect an update in the late fall, which will provide a progress report on that which we have set out to do in the coming months and years, and also some course corrections based on new information culled from new information gleaned from the college-wide planning exercise that we participated in this summer.