Monthly Archives: April 2009

Printer in 161 Lab

The printer in room 161 has been diagnosed with a bad duplexer. For now it is working. If you are working after hours and it keeps giving you a duplexer error, you can remove the duplexer. First turn off the printer then gently lift up on the duplexer (bulky looking thing sticking out of the back of the printer) in the back of the printer as you pull it out. Leave the duplexer out and turn the printer back on, it will default to a single-sided printer. Put the duplexer in room 208. If you run into any problems call the Main Library circ desk or the help desk. A new duplexer is on order.

No – we do not repair personal DVD’s

FYI – message from Joseph Watson in Preservation and Processing (P&P):
Hi,
We recently had a request to send some personally owned DVDs through the repair machine and that prompted Terry and me to weigh the pros and cons of offering that service to the community. We have decided that we will not accept DVDs from individuals and that we will only treat items owned by Middlebury College.

If we did decide to offer that service, in order to make it cost neutral, we’d have to charge for staff time, wear and tear on the machine, and supplies used. We don’t want to get into that because we really can’t afford to devote staff resources to non-essential work, especially work that doesn’t directly benefit the College.

The good news is, Video King does do this… they charge $3 per DVD. If anyone asks about such a service, please explain that we only treat items owned by Middlebury College and refer them to the retail establishment downtown.

Thanks!
-Joseph

Requests for Ethernet Cables


Thanks for passing on the comments and requests about barcoding and loaning our Ethernet cables.
We are considering alternatives to the yellow cable program. A little bit of history – prior to the yellow cable program we loaned out cables with laptops and power adapters. It was a collection that required a lot of time to process, inventory, maintain, and circulate – and it was at the suggestion of Circ Desk student employees that we explored other options to barcoding loaner cables. At this time, we may not be able to justify the expenditure on time and budget dollars required to loan out a very affordable $5 piece of equipment.

Cables can be purchased for about $5 at the bookstore
Please pass on ideas about how we can encourage the return of the cables!

See below for Mike Roy’s comment on the LIS Suggestion Blog
The yellow cable problem is something we have, alas, given much thought to. What began as a simple way to provide students with a resource that they could borrow and return on the honor system has turned into a bit of a nightmare. It turns out that lots of people borrow the cables, but barely any return them, resulting in hundreds of cables having gone missing. When we decided that this was no longer a good way to spend our precious budget dollars, people started stealing cables from our printers and desktop computers, rendering these devices temporarily useless. While we agree that barcoding and loaning out cables might work, and we’ll explore the logistics and costs of this, we do wonder what’s going on that people feel it is okay to steal cables from the College’s computers and printers. Also, given that we provide wireless network access to much of the campus, we also wonder why these cables are still in such high demand. And then there is the same question that we wonder about missing socks: where do all these stolen cables end up?

Sub Requests – Be Specific in the Subject Line

A couple of things to remember when requesting a sub for your shift.
When you need a sub, please list your name, the day, date and exact time of your shift in the subject line. Always start a new message with correct shift info when requesting a sub.
Verify schedule changes in the Outlook schedule and alert a supervisor to any errors.
Remember to “reply all” when taking a sub shift.
For your reference, I have copied the Procedures below.
Many thanks! This will help us keep all the many schedule changes straight, and minimize errors and confusion.
Elin

Student Staff Substitute Procedure
Send an email to the appropriate student assistant distribution list
o Main Library: LIS – Main Lib Circ Student Assistants distribution list
o Music Library: LIS – Music Library Student Assistants distribution list
o Armstrong Library: LIS – Armstrong Library Student Assistants distribution list
o Music and Armstrong – copy regular branch staff
o Main Library – the Library Circulation mailbox gets copied automatically
Type your name, day, date & time (of the sub shift) in the subject field of the message
Reply to all when signing up for a shift – you are now responsible for the shift
Confirm with a supervisor that the shift change has been recorded on the master Outlook calendar

New Location Code in Mill Circ – omill

Quick FYI:
When searching for materials in the Mill Circ staff client you may notice a new location code – omill. This code designates that the material lives at the Olin Library at Mills College in California.
These items will only display in the staff client of Millennium – and will not show up in Midcat.
The materials are for the Midd Language School programs housed at Mills College for Summer 09.