a busy lab

Students fill the Wilson Media Lab in the Davis Family Library, completing media projects for the end of the semester. A good number of students in this picture are finishing up posters for their theses.

As I read through this, I think of the LIS mission statement “We bring knowledge to you. We help you explore, use, and contribute to it as you engage the world”, and how the many, many activities we are engaged in are all part of our overall effort to evolve our resources and services to adapt to a changing information and technology environment, an evolving curriculum, and a community with an increasing appetite for all things digital. I am also struck by how these seemingly disparate activities all do in fact connect with one another through our mission, and through our mission to the broader mission of the College.

Students…  Interested in skills you can use in Life Beyond Midd?  lynda.com has everything you need!  Just click any of these course links, log on with your Middlebury username and password and you’re on your way.  Work through an entire course or view just the movie segments you need — it’s up to you.

• Discovering Your Strengths
• Creating an Effective Resume
• Job Search Strategies

This small sampler of business skills topics is just the beginning — lynda currently offers over 1600 course titles from which to choose.

Need a hand getting started?  Sign up for our lynda.com overview session at noon on March 15.

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Dear Valued Client,

In order to install new security upgrades and additional security features, Remote-Learner’s IT technical support division has planned a five-hour maintenance. During the maintenance period internet connectivity may be briefly disrupted several times on February 16th from 1:00 am EST to 6:00 am EST.

The new upgrades and security features will provide additional hosting security for clients.  Ultimately, we believe that you will be pleased with the security updates, and we ask in advance that you accept our apologies for any inconvenience you may experience. We welcome your feedback on our efforts to continue to provide quality customer service and we request that you direct any questions and concerns related to this scheduled maintenance to Remote-Learner’s support division.

Sincerely,

The Remote-Learner Team

The response to first question shows a 63% agreement rate (or an 85% non-disagree rate).

The second question was an optional “Why?” “Why not?” comment, and many respondents took the opportunity to explain their choices. There were 79 comments.

Typical of the “yes” respondents’ comments:

“Absolutely agree. While this does not change the essence of the thing, what something is called still carries a great weight – “sites” is a much more versatile term and lends greater freedom to this URL series. “

“ A blog has a reputation as something homegrown, of someone writing their thoughts on a particular topic. Sites sounds more like a neutral label as just something listed online. I like it.”

“I do not like to think of my site as a blog, as it has a lot of information that is not chronologically-ordered. This would be a terrific change!”

Explanations

Some comments expressed valid concerns, here they are with an explanation of the impact:

“I think we might need to update every single go link for all the middgoal posts and middstart posts we have out there. Who knows what links the students have been promoting… Seems like a major pain for what really is a minor change. If there is a workaround for this that I don’t know about, then go for it.”

“I have been working for a long time at having people connect to my blog.  If you change it, all those links will be broken, and with it I will lose readership.”

There will be a permanent redirect for the new URLs, anyone clicking on the old URL will still visit your site. Also, sites with their own URL (http://southchinasea.org, http://middstart.middlebury.edu, etc.) without “blogs” in the URL will not see a change.

“…will this mess up google rankings, searching, etc.?”

There may be a minor impact on rankings, but factors like credible resources linking to your site have a higher impact. In addition, because of the change we made last January, you can still track your site in Google Analytics.

The Web Prioritization Committee approved this change at the January 24th meeting, we will let you know when the change will take place.

The Davis Family Library will offer withdrawn and duplicate copies of books and other media for sale at great prices.   Choose from a wide variety of items for scholarly work or recreational reading, listening, and viewing.  This year’s sale will also include some used media playing equipment.  Proceeds from the sale are used to purchase new library materials. (Because the low price asked for materials is in part a service to the College community, anyone purchasing items on the first day of the sale will be required to show a Middlebury College ID.  Book dealers are not welcome to purchase items for resale on Tuesday, Nov. 13th). FMI, contact Joseph Watson 443-5487 jwatson@middlebury.edu

What’s Overdrive? It’s Middlebury’s ebook and audiobook collection of prize-winning fiction, non-fiction, and popular reading…(go/Overdrive).
If you already have the app installed, you’ll see an “update” prompt the next time you open it. Otherwise, download the updated apps here:

• Amazon App Store for Android
• iTunes App Store
• Google Play
• OverDrive Downloads Page