On Tuesday, Jan. 16, our systems vendor Innovative Interfaces will be performing an upgrade of MIDCAT, the library catalog. We expect the catalog to be unavailable from approximately 3AM-5AM Tuesday morning.
Apologies for any inconvenience, and thank you in advance for your understanding.
Terry Simpkins
Director, Discovery & Access Services
Middlebury College Libraries
UPDATE: This issue has now been resolved. Again, we apologize for the confusion and unneccessary alarm.
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Earlier this morning, many of you may have received automated email notices generated by our library system (MIDCAT) erroneously informing you of having overdue library materials. Please ignore these notices. We are investigating why these notices were sent, but please be assured that the materials are NOT currently charged out to your account.
We apologize for this inconvenience.
Terry Simpkins
Director, Discovery & Access Services
Middlebury Library
On Tuesday, December 19, 2017, the library will be offering limited services as we migrate our MIDCAT library catalog from a locally-hosted server environment to a vendor-hosted one. This includes all catalog look up, renewal, borrowing, MyMIDCAT, and circulation functions, from both on- and off-campus.
Specifically:
The migration is expected to last approximately 6 hours, and, while we hope it takes even less time than that, as with any technology change there are no guarantees. We will update the College community via this blog if the process takes significantly longer than 6 hours.
This is the first phase of a multi-phase project to upgrade the library catalog to a more modern platform, and it needs to be done during regular business hours in order to accommodate our vendor, Innovative Interfaces, Inc. The remainder of the migration will be scheduled during the interim period between the Spring 2018 semester and the beginning of the College’s summer programs. We will announce that date on this blog when finalized.
If you have any questions, please contact either Terry Simpkins or Mike Roy. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
A new document outlining proposals from the US Copyright Office to accommodate two areas where copyright law is currently weak: 1) handling “orphan works” (i.e. works still protected by copyright but for whom the copyright owner is impossible or difficult to find) and 2) dealing with “mass digitization” projects (e.g. the Google Books project).
Both Kevin Smith on his Scholarly Communications @ Duke blog and Mike Masnick at Techdirt find the proposed solutions for the “orphan works” situation as bad as the problems they are purporting to solve. Worth a read.
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Augmented World Expo 2015: Behind the scenes of singer Bjork’s weird, immersive virtual reality – The team from Bjork’s immersive MoMA installation talks about authoring reality at the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, California.
Image: Erin Carson/TechRepublic
The Library is pleased to announce the first issue of our new, as-yet-unnamed, newsletter! Continue reading
“Amazon Takes on Textbook Sales at Major Universities.” Engadget. Accessed February 2, 2015.http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/02/amazon-college-distribution-centers/.
A concise update on net neutrality –
and How Netflix helped change the FCC’s definition of net neutrality.
Lepore, Jill. “The Cobweb: Can The Internet Be Archived?” The New Yorker, January 19, 2015.
Good read about the Internet Archive and Wayback Machine.
Project Nourished combines brightly colored experimental cuisine, crafted from agar and pectin, with VR simulations intended to make those meager morsels seem tastier than they really are.
Forget Virtual Reality. Are You Ready for Virtual Sushi?– A small Los Angeles-based team of designers, engineers, and chefs have cooked up a “gastronomical virtual reality experience” that use head mounted displays, 3-D printers, and food science to take aim at our tastebuds.