Staying Connected
Research Desk hours for the fall semester begin on Sunday, September 10. Send any questions over to us!
Refer research questions to the Research Desk, or to librarians in the offices behind the Research Desk. Contact info and hours below and at http://go.middlebury.edu/askus.
Fall Research Desk Hours
NOTE we no longer staff Sunday nights
Mon – Wed: 11 am – 5 pm
and 7 pm – 10 pm
Thursday: 11 am – 5 pm
Friday: 11 am – 4 pm
Sunday: 1 pm – 5 pm
Take a mini-vacation to visit Vermont historic sites that stretch the length of the state. Ranging from prehistoric encampments, to pivotal Revolutionary War sites, to the homes of U.S. presidents, Vermont’s historic sites chronicle the development of a state, its people, and the nation around it. Explore backroads and byways to discover Vermont’s history.
The Circulation Desk at Davis Family Library offers a three-day pass to college staff, faculty and students.
Additionally, we have a three-day ECHO Pass on the waterfront in Burlington. $7 dollar admission per person valid up to 4 guests.
Heads-up to anyone who helps students find things-
Next week, the first President’s Course at Middlebury and Midd-Monterey will begin. It’s called Water in an Insecure World: Symbol, Resources, or Commodity (INTD 0285A). 20 Middlebury students and 20 MIIS students are enrolled in the course. In addition, alumni have been invited to follow along separately. You might receive questions like the ones below….
Where and when does the course meet?
Where is the course website?
Where are the course readings?
More questions? Ask Carrie (cmacfarl@middlebury.edu, x5018) or Bill (bkoul@middlebury.edu, x5002).
We have a set of meditation cushions available for loaning out. This is a pilot program for the semester. The cushions are located below cabinet no. 5 (the stand-alone cabinet outside of Jim’s office). They are for in-library use only. Let me know if you have questions.
You won’t see librarians at the Research Desk again until Sunday, July 3, but if the library is open, librarians are around! The go/askus page tells you how to find us. If you receive a research question, please don’t hesitate to refer it to us.
Please encourage all researchers to drop by! It’s not interrupting. It’s our job!
A Write-In will take place in 3 locations at the Davis Family Library on Wednesday, May 4, from 8-11pm. Most activity will be in LIB201 (tutor, librarian, food, group work), but students who wish to work quietly will be invited to use LIB145 and the Harman Reading Room too. I’ll post signs in Harman on Tuesday.
More: http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2016/04/29/join-us-at-our-first-write-in/
On Tuesday, March 15th I landed in San Francisco and headed for the Hilton Conference Center. The IUG Conference started the next day at 9:00 am in the morning. After waking up at 3 in the morning, because I was still on the east coast time. I had plenty of time to get ready for the 1st agenda of the day, the Keynote presentation “Wide open: on culture, literacy, and the challenge of change” by Don Levy. He was an engaging and entertaining speaker. After his presentation, there was a business meeting. The Innovative Management Team ( https://www.iii.com/about/team) was introduced. Chief Executive Officer James Tallman, took the stage and presented how Innovative is doing at the present time and what the future holds for the company. He was hired 6 months ago. I was impressed in how much he learned about Innovative with that short time period. He announced that the Innovative acquired Polaris Library systems. One of the things he talked about that caught my attention was the fact that Innovative was not only using the cloud technology but is making sure to not discount all the other technologies.
The workshops started later in the afternoon on Wednesday. Many of the workshops that I attended had power points associated with them. If you are interested in any of them let me know and I can send them to you. (that is if the presenter left it)
Here are the workshops I went to
Although they all were informative, the two that I liked the best where “What’s new and Ahead for Sierra/Millennium…” and “Managing Student Workers.”.
Leif Pedersen, Executive Vice President-Product who is part of the Innovative Management Team, presented “What’s new and ahead…was a “roadmap” to where Innovative was going with their products. This is a session that they do every conference. They are moving forward with updates, patches and so forth with Sierra but at some point they will not be doing that with Millennium. Eventually all platforms will merge into one Innovative solution. That’s years down the road; as technology advances they want to meet it with a new product that can utilize all those advances.
“Managing Library Student Workers” is another one that they do every conference. Dorothy Hargett, The Access Services Supervisor of Regent University presented this session with wit and enthusiasm. She spoke to a crowd of mostly student worker supervisors. It was refreshing to hear that many of the issues both bad and good that happens at Middlebury College are common in all other institutes.
Innovative has several products but supports three Library services platform, Millennium, Sierra and now Polaris. Please click on each one to see the details. As I said above Millennium is slowly going out of style. Sierra would be the natural replacement. After talking to several people who made the transformation, they all indicated that it was an easy transfer and some libraries didn’t have to do any training because it was so similar to Millennium. I never heard of Polaris so I talked to Dennis Todd, the Senior Sales Engineer for Polaris. He recommended this site http://polaris.iiidiscovery.com/ and he also gave me a University that uses Polaris, University of Sioux Falls. Click on it will bring you to their Library site. Please take a look at these different products and make comments below.
We’re available for questions at the Research Desk! Winter Term hours begin today. (Evening coverage begins next week.)
How to cite a web site in a bibliography? How to find more (or fewer!) scholarly articles? Where to look for statistics? We can help!
Refer research questions to the Research Desk, or to librarians in the offices behind the research desk. Contact info and hours below and at http://go.middlebury.edu/askus.
