Present: Mike Roy, Chris Norris, Mary Backus, Jim Stuart, David Ludwig, Terry Simpkins, and Doreen Bernier
We discussed a recent decision by UVM to place a freeze on new projects from Middlebury faculty for the UVM Vermont Advanced Computing Core (VACC). UVM has been providing our faculty with access to this service, which is used for computing-intensive research. At this point, faculty already using the VACC are not affected.
Several alternate options were discussed. Some of these include:
- Investigating the feasibility of asking faculty currently using the system to mentor new faculty;
- Look for new institutional partners;
- Propose a cost recovery model to UVM;
- Look to use faculty start-up funds for local machines.
Jim will convene a meeting to continue this discussion. Terry will ask liaisons about reaching out to departments currently using the system in order to try to determine what expectations are going forward for current researchers using the service. We agreed that we should include Bob Cluss in these discussions.
The Directors discussed what high level areas the next MISO survey (to occur in Spring 2014) should focus on. Terry mentioned the MISO group’s strong suggestion to keep the survey under 15 minutes for faculty, which would entail sharply reducing the number of questions we have traditionally asked. The directors’ generally agreed to focus on the following areas as much as possible while aiming to keep the survey under the 15 minute mark for faculty.
The areas of most interest include:
- Curricular technology services
- Liaisons services
- Wireless
- Responsive web design for display on mobile devices
- Online registration
- Public printing
- Time to resolve computer issues
- Video conferencing
- eBooks
We also talked briefly about distributing a shorter survey every year instead of every two years as we currently do. This would have modest budgetary implications. No action on this is needed immediately, and we will discuss more as the decision point gets closer.
Mike distributed a draft of the College campus-wide goals document to the Directors for review, and asked each director to review the document with their workgroups with the aim of determining what the resource implications might be. We will resume discussion at next week’s AD meeting.
We talked broadly about considering new policies (or renewed emphasis on enforcing existing policies) with regard to the use of rapid growth in network infrastructure and storage needs in areas such as retention of old/unused/archival files, creation of multiple special interest mailboxes (fun fact of the day: LIS currently supports 18,000 mailboxes), and distribution lists. We also noted that there are widespread misconceptions about costs associated with redundant network storage, with the prevailing belief being that the cost is inexpensive. This is emphatically not the case for enterprise systems, where even just 1TB of unmirrored storage costs is rather expensive. Mike will bring this discussion to a future VP meeting when a proposal is prepared.
Finally, we discussed plans to replace the information desk and install an electronic directory kiosk or kiosks. We have been given budgetary permission to hire an architect to propose a redesign of the space currently housing the information desk, but the kiosk can be set up independently. However, work orders for Facilities need to be submitted soon. The Space Team will contact the Web Team and other appropriate parties to discuss content, scope, and programming for the electronic directory.
Next week’s agenda thus far:
- Guest: Space Team (10:00)
- Library Systems Think Tank charge approval
Thanks for reading
Terry & Doreen