The Davis Family Library now has 3 mobile standing desks.
“The Nomad Stand”
Students can use these anywhere in the library. If one is not in use, just take it to a spot that is the right height for your comfort level.
They were designed by Franklin Dean-Farrar in Athletics and made here in Middlebury by Maple Landmark Woodcraft.
If these are popular we’ll order more.
Students have asked for standing desks, and we listened!
— The Library Space Team
Going away this summer? Take the library with you! Yes, you can search library databases from off campus. Just start at the library site: go.middlebury.edu/lib. From there, JSTOR, ebooks, audiobooks, Summon and all of our online journals, magazines and newspapers are available to you…no matter where you are!
When you’re off campus, links that are on library web pages (a few examples of library web pages include Research Guides, Summon and the Journals list) will ask you to log in with Midd credentials. It’s as easy as that!
Seniors: Here’s how to get alumni access to library databases!
Enjoy the summer!
The Davis Family Library will be open 24 hours a day starting Sunday morning, May 7th. Regular hours resume for Friday and Saturday, May 12th and 13th, then 24/7 resumes until 8 pm on Tuesday, May 23rd. After 11 pm, you will need your ID to access the building.
Armstrong Library will have regular hours, with extended hours Friday and Saturday, May 19th and 20th (closing at 10 pm).
A full calendar of the hours can be found at go/hours
In case you are wondering what that noise is on the main floor of the Davis Family Library today, it is the installation of a new ADA-compliant water fountain that is designed to fill water bottles too. 
The Library Space Team successfully applied for an Environmental Council grant to cover the cost for one. The fountain will count the number of times a water bottle / glass is filled. Next time you are thinking of buying bottled water, think instead about using a refillable container (and thus avoid landfill waste or the energy and financial costs of recycling). It will also be the only ADA-compliant fountain in the Library, so if someone in a wheelchair needs a water fountain, be sure to direct them to this one, which is just opposite the print copy room on the main level.
Don’t miss the March issue of Keywords: The Middlebury College Library Newsletter!
Read about how the library is planning for College-wide budget reductions, how you can dig through Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) materials online, our battle to acquire a 1521 edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, new colleagues at the library, and more.
The ACTT recommended a fall 2016 Panopto Pilot, following the spring 2016 evaluation of streaming media and video asset management services. 10 Undergraduate and 8 MIIS courses used Panopto for video streaming. Students that also used Canvas in their courses could access video from Panopto, however they had to log in again. Some faculty at MIIS also used the webcasting feature successfully, including interactive discussion and note-taking features. Sharing videos via Canvas site embedding and through a link has resulted in a good user experience, however it currently requires separate logins to Canvas and Panopto platforms.
Panopto has indicated that it would add the following features to the video streaming service by December 17th:
A shortcode plugin for WordPress has been added to sites.middlebury.edu/sites.miis.edu. Currently it is not possible to add a Panopto video to Drupal, but other schools have solutions for embedding in Drupal that they are willing to share.
Feedback on Panopto has been generally good, and it has been useful for the classes that did use it. Departments are interested in the service that Panopto provides.
The Academic Cyberinfrastructure Transformation Team recommends adding Panopto to the ITS fiscal year 2018 budget.
Most of this work has been accomplished during the Fall 2016 pilot of Panopto. There is some work being done by Panopto technical staff to provide better integration with Canvas, they have let us know it is scheduled to be completed by December 17, 2016.
| What | Who | When |
| Budget Proposal | January 2017 | |
| Budget Decision | May 2017 | |
| Panopto Pilot continues | Spring 2017 | |
| Test LTI – Pilot | Spring 2017 | |
| Implement Panopto including SSO and Canvas LTI | Media Services and Academic Technology | June-July 2017 |
| Train Middlebury and MIIS HelpDesk & Media Services staff | June-July 2017 |
| What | Who |
| Panopto Support available to users | 4 authorized contacts may receive support via: phone, email
General users may use chat and web tickets |
| Pedagogy/Instructional Design-related support | Primary: Academic Tech, DLC, DL
Backup Support: Media Services |
| Administrative-use support (core functions) | Primary: Media Services* |
| Other academic support (creativity & innovation project, student internship w/ or w/out credit, faculty research, symposium) | Primary: Media Services
Backup Support: Academic Tech, DLC, DL |
| Training | Media Services, Academic Tech, DLC, DL |
* Conversations are occurring to identify course-related and administrative department support for the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
We investigated alternative web conferencing services for remote work, collaboration, and online learning. Our Adobe service provider will be discontinuing their education pricing for Adobe Connect licenses, doubling our costs.
A number of services were identified; some of them were also being investigated through the IT Unified Communications project. We first inventoried the features of each service and then identified the top three services to compare with Adobe Connect. 15 people from ACTT Core group and extended ACTT at Middlebury and Monterey groups compared the user experiences of the three services with Adobe Connect and each other.
Zoom was selected because it had the best user experience of the services identified after having tested it in all three categories named above: remote work, collaboration, and online learning. It had a good reputation amongst users and was being successfully implemented in a variety of mission-critical contexts: an online class, in an Envisioning Middlebury community initiated conversation attended by 30 people on the topic of distance collaboration and remote work, in a global virtual nonproliferation education forum coordinated from Monterey, and in a variety of other use cases. The enterprise license cost was also comparatively lower.
Integrated access to reliable, scalable, and flexible web conferencing for all Middlebury students, faculty and staff will be realized by adopting Zoom at the enterprise level (all Middlebury). The potential impact of this investment in shared resources include improved communications, outreach, and teaching innovation.
The Academic Cyberinfrastructure Transformation Team recommends adding Zoom to the ITS fiscal year 2018 budget, replacing prior services.
Proposed FY 18 Zoom cost: $41,000 annually
Host licenses for all Middlebury users, 470 100 capacity meeting rooms and ten 500 capacity meeting rooms. In addition to offering a web conferencing solution, Zoom has the potential to phase out and replace existing video conferencing services, a significant savings for Middlebury over the next few years.
Actual FY 17 Adobe Connect Cost: $18,000
Proposed FY 18 Adobe Connect Cost: $36,000
Most of this work has been accomplished during the Fall 2016 pilot of Zoom. Also, the pilot license will be extended during Spring 2017 to transition users from Adobe Connect to Zoom.
| What | Who | When |
| Budget Proposal | January 2017 | |
| Budget Decision | May 2017 | |
| Extended Zoom Pilot, Transition people away from Adobe Connect | Spring 2017 | |
| Test LTI – Pilot | Spring 2017 | |
| Implement Zoom including SSO and Canvas LTI | Media Services, CSNS and Academic Technology | June-July 2017 |
| Decommission Adobe Connect | January-May 2017 | |
| Train Middlebury and Monterey Institute HelpDesk staff | June-July 2017 |
| What | Who |
| Zoom Support available to users | Tier 1 Vendor support via: phone, email, chat |
| Course-related support | Primary: Media Services*
Backup Support: Academic Tech, DLC, DL |
| Administrative-use support (core functions) | Primary: Media Services* |
| Other academic support (creativity & innovation project, student internship w/ or w/out credit, faculty research, symposium) | Primary: Media Services
Backup Support: Academic Tech, DLC, DL |
| Training | Media Services |
| Academic Consultation | Academic Tech, DLC, DL |
* Conversations are occurring to identify course-related and administrative department support for the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
When you hear the words “cloud,” “sync,” and “local” all in one sentence do your eyes glaze over? You are not alone. Please take a look at our new handout (easily revisited using http://go.middlebury.edu/cloudpic) to help you understand Middlebury’s cloud storage and some key points about its use.
Pssst… If you find our handout helpful, please don’t tell your friends about it — let them learn the hard way, eh?
Be on the alert for a suspicious email purportedly sent from “thammasat@goconnext.com” with the subject line “Thammasat Great Journal, Thailand“. This is a confirmed phishing message, designed to trick you into downloading a malicious file. Do not click on the links in the message or reply to the message. If you find a copy of the message in your inbox, please delete it. If you find a copy of this message in your spam quarantine, please ignore it and do not release it. The message will be deleted from your quarantine automatically in the next few days.
For more information about phishing attacks, please visit http://go.middlebury.edu/phishing. For more information about the spam quarantine, please visit http://go.middlebury.edu/spam.
Be on the alert for a suspicious email purportedly sent from “thammasat@goconnext.com” with the subject line “Thammasat Great Journal, Thailand“. This is a confirmed phishing message, designed to trick you into downloading a malicious file. Do not click on the links in the message or reply to the message. If you find a copy of the message in your inbox, please delete it. If you find a copy of this message in your spam quarantine, please ignore it and do not release it. The message will be deleted from your quarantine automatically in the next few days.
For more information about phishing attacks, please visit http://go.middlebury.edu/phishing. For more information about the spam quarantine, please visit http://go.middlebury.edu/spam.