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.
The Davis Family Library will be providing extended hours during the last week of classes and the exam period.
24/7 hours will start at 9:00 am on Sunday, 5/5 and will end at 8 pm on Tuesday, 5/21. Bring your ID – card access is required between 11 pm and 7:30 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.
Armstrong Library will have regular hours during this period, with later closing times on Friday 5/17 and Saturday 5/18.
Check here for up to date hours at all Libraries.
Important notice about the analog video format
This is an important notice about the analog video format. It relates to the phasing out analog media and analog players (VCR, Laserdisc [LD] and slide projectors) in the classrooms at Middlebury College. Please review the next sections for information on the reasons behind this and the approach that LIS plans to undertake.
Summary of the analog sunset plan
Analog media (VHS, Betamax, U-matic, etc.) and certain digital media (LaserDiscs) have become obsolete – new media are not being produced, nor are replacement players. For LaserDisc and VCR technology, better, higher quality, and easier to use digital technologies have emerged. By removing these media players players and slide projectors from classrooms, and by replacing these older formats with digital ones, we can ensure that our classrooms will continue to be functional, easy to use, and easy to support, both now and in the near future.
The media and computer industries have chosen to retire certain older audio and video technologies and move to newer digital audio and video formats. This means the imminent death of VHS, LaserDisc, 3/4″ tape and, eventually, even our beloved VGA (and possibly even 16mm and 35mm film, but we don’t know that quite yet). BluRay (using a newer connection type – HDMI) and streaming Internet video are the newer formats intended to replace all of the aforementioned older media formats. The DVD format remains alive, for now.
LIS has developed a plan to address the obsolescence of these older formats and support for the new ones. The process is guided by a combination of technology options, copyright law, and input from our user community. The Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines section of the Handbook outlines some of the copyright intricacies. If you currently have a VHS tape, Laserdisc or 35mm slides that you use for class, you should be developing a strategy for migrating the class material to a different media for use inside and outside of class (see What can you do to prepare.)
Important Dates
What we are doing to prepare
What can you do to prepare
If you currently have a VHS tape, Laserdisc or 35mm slides that you use for class, you should be developing a strategy for migrating the class material to a different media for use inside and outside of class. Look for DVD, Blu-Ray or (legal) Internet video replacements for any VHS, LaserDisc, 3/4″ tape, or Betamax titles in your personal collection. The Library (go/requests) or your liaison (go/liaisons) can assist you with this. If a commercial digital copy is available we will attempt to purchase a replacement; processing times will vary based on availability. Before any in-house conversion of analog or obsolete digital formats is done, however, we need to determine the legality of the duplication request. Expect about 5 business days for the copyright question to be resolved (this can be a somewhat complex issue) and another 5 business days for the actual conversion.
Your input is needed!
We are looking for feedback on the plan, the process and our communications. You can reach out to your LIS liaison or contact me (Petar Mitrevski) directly. You can also post a response right here on the blog and start a lively discussion.
We emphasize the analog sunset whenever we receive a report that a VCR player or VHS tape is broken. We have shared this plan with the Faculty LIS Advisory Group (FLAC) and are working to incorporate their feedback. LIS liaisons will continue to work with each academic department to share this plan and engage in discussion. We have talked about the analog sunset in our December Quarterly Update, April Quarterly Update, and in the context of the recent classroom renovations in Warner. But we need more input from our community. Thank you!
More Information
You can read the entire plan at http://go.middlebury.edu/analog. In addition, we’ve developed an FAQ section based on questions from our community. You can also check what other schools are doing to address the issue.
I just posted the latest installment of the Quarterly Update from LIS. This installment covers activity from December 2012 through March 2013, and describes recent accomplishments, our current priorities (for the next 3-6 months) and longer range opportunities and challenges that we are preparing for. The 14 workgroups and teams that comprise LIS each contributed on average a little more than five items in each of the three categories. This adds up to a total of 233 items, broken down into 72 items recently accomplished, 95 items that are current priorities, and 66 items in the future-oriented category. As always, we hope that this report provides useful insight into the work that we are engaged in. We welcome feedback on any and all items included in this report.
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.
Have you recently had difficulties projecting from your laptop or the podium desktop computer?
Here is an easy tip to try on a Windows 7 or Windows 8 computer:
If you have a Mac or an older version of Windows you can visit our go/projection website for more projection tips.
We are looking into ways in which we can make the “Duplicate” option be default on podium computers. If you prefer to use one of the other options (e.g. Extend) you can always temporarily choose that.
Next week we will show you how to do the same on a Mac and we will also publish an article about using PowerPoint’s Presenter Mode. Stay tuned!
Please don’t hesitate to contact the helpdesk if you need more help! We are happy to schedule a help session for a larger group or meet with you one on one!
Best,
The LIS Media Services Crew
LIS installed a new black & white printer and a release station for student use in Chateau 001 lower level study lounge. The PaperCut print queue name is CHT001. A list of all public printer locations can be found at http://go/print
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.
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.
We have received a message from Remote-Learner, our Moodle hosting company, that they will be doing some maintenance to improve the security of the service. Expect disruptions in service between 1-6am on Saturday, February 16th.
—–
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
Owners of blogs & web sites on Middlebury’s WordPress site were asked their opinion on a proposed change in the URL (address) of the site from “sites.middlebury.edu” to “sites.middlebury.edu”. The change was proposed to the Web Prioritization Committee as a way “…to provide faculty (and others) using WP as a content management system, personal website, research portfolio, conference proceedings, or other collection of information with a more neutral-sounding domain name than “sites.middlebury.edu.””
We’ve had 179 responses to our two-question survey, which went out to 929 WP users.
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!”
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.
Over the last week Middlebury experienced a dramatic increase in the number of successful phishing attacks that resulted in Middlebury user accounts being compromised. A phishing attack is the effort of maliciously using email or a web site to try to unwittingly gain information about another individual. These recent attacks resulted in two distinct outcomes. The first was that many of these accounts were leveraged to generate large amounts of spam. The second result from these compromised accounts is that the attackers attempted to connect to the Middlebury network with the exposed user’s credentials.
This past week many individuals across our campus received an email that looked similar to the one below:
————————————–
Message with “Middlebury” as the display name
Dear Member,
You Have 1 New Message
Click here to read
Sincerely,
Middlebury Webmail Service
————————————
The link in this message redirected people to copy of the Middlebury CAS Logon page. Two important things to know about email from Middlebury IT Services. First, Library and Information Services will never ask for your user credentials in an email. Second, if you find yourself on any web page that is asking for credentials, always verify the address in your web browser’s address bar, to ensure that the web page is where you really want to be. Just because a web page has the Middlebury logo does not mean it is always a Middlebury web site.
To protect against phishing remember the following rules:
The Helpdesk will help you determine if the email is legitimate. Please do NOT click on any links in a suspect email message.
If you suspect that you may have recently provided your Middlebury credentials to a fraudulent web site or email address, you should immediately reset your password at go/activate and then contact the Helpdesk.
If you become aware that your Middlebury account has been disabled, you must contact the Helpdesk to resolve.
More information is available at the Middlebury College Information Security web site at go/infoSec or contact the InfoSec office at infosec@middlebury.edu.
Ian Burke
Network Security Administrator
Middlebury College
infosec@middlebury.edu
