Author Archives: Jess Isler

About Jess Isler

http://go.middlebury.edu/askus Liaison to Dance, Theatre, and Studio Art, Music Cataloger, LIS Website Team Leader.

Sign up for LIS Website Testing!

Students, Faculty, and Staff: Would you like the opportunity to help LIS improve its website and make it work for you?

If you agree to help, we’ll observe and record you performing some tasks on the website.

Sessions will be scheduled from Monday, February 27 through Thursday, March 8 in the Davis Family Library. If you’re interested, please sign up by Thursday February 23rd (sign-ups are now closed), and we’ll respond with a confirmation. Details are below.

The session will take no longer than 45 minutes (15 minutes for explanation and summary, and 30 minutes for testing activities). We’ll ask you to perform specific tasks and we’ll use your responses in our work to improve the site. Your participation will be strictly used within LIS staff and not shared with any outside organization.

Thank you for taking this opportunity to help LIS improve its web presence!

January Staff Recognition

The LIS Recognition & Recreation Crew is pleased to announce the first recipients of the Employees and Crew of the Month for 2012:

For January 2012:

  • Emma Williams – LIS Student Employee of the Month
  • David Ludwig – LIS Employee of the Month
  • Central Systems and Network Services (Dave Guertin, Rick James, Jeff Lahaie, Mike Lynch, Howie McCausland, Mark Pyfrom, and Jim Stuart) – LIS Crew of the Month

The comments submitted by nominators in support of these awards were read aloud at the January all-LIS staff meeting. Congratulations to all!

Nominate students, staff, & crews! Please be sure to explain why the nominee deserves recognition. Include details about the work that was accomplished and the way in which it was accomplished.

LIS Website Team Update: UNA

This is an update on the LIS Website Team’s progress toward the User Needs Analysis (UNA) piece of our charge. Right now we’re sharing the results and suggested changes that emerged from the UNA with the LIS Content Managers for the 4 primary LIS Homepages (Curricular Technology, Helpdesk, Library, & LIS).

The UNA results were based on a handful of participants in focus groups and a relatively small number of responses to webpage pop-up surveys (particularly for certain web pages). We are now turning our focus to designing Usability testing (likely based on the format used by the original Website Team). We hope to achieve better participation for this phase of our assessment. We’ll wait to share the results of our UNA until Usability testing is complete and summarized, effectively sharing all the new LIS Website assessment data at once.

Friday links roundup – December 16, 2011

A Top 10 List In Favor Of Censoring The Internet – The MPAA has been sending around a sort of “top 10 list” to folks in Congress about why they should vote to censor the internet via PROTECT IP (PIPA).  Of course, the ten reasons don’t make much sense, and we figured that it might be helpful to shine a little of that reality light on the claims. (From TechDirt)

October and November Staff Recognition

The LIS Recognition & Recreation Crew is pleased to announce the recipients of the LIS Employees and LIS Crew of the Month for October and November 2011:

October:

  • Chad Sonn – LIS Student Employee of the Month
  • Kellam Ayres – LIS Employee of the Month
  • Collection Development Advisory Group (Bryan Carson, Brenda Ellis, Michele McHugh, Joy Pile) – LIS Crew of the Month

November:

  • James Maru – LIS Student Employee of the Month
  • Julie Tumminia-Tomsuden – LIS Employee of the Month
  • Video Capture Group (Sue Driscoll, Rebekah Irwin, Richard Jenkins, Matt LaFrance, Petar Mitrevski, Scott Witt) – LIS Crew of the Month

The comments submitted by nominators in support of these awards were read aloud at the November all-LIS staff meeting. Congratulations to all!

Nominate students, staff, & crews! Please be sure to explain why the nominee deserves recognition. Include details about the work that was accomplished and the way in which it was accomplished.

September LIS Staff Recognition

The LIS Recognition & Recreation Crew is pleased to announce the recipients of the LIS Employees and LIS Crew of the Month for September 2011:

  • Erik Fendik – LIS Student Employee of the Month
  • Sue Driscoll – LIS Employee of the Month
  • Summon Implementation Group – LIS Crew of the Month (Bryan Carson, Arabella Holzapfel, Barbara Merz)

The comments submitted by nominators in support of these awards were read aloud at the September all-LIS staff meeting. Congratulations to Erik, Sue, and the Summon Implementation Group!

Submit nominations via the web form here: Staff Nomination form

Please be sure to explain why the nominee deserves recognition. Include a few details about the work that was accomplished and the way in which it was accomplished.

Road Map to Student Services recap

Yesterday Pij and I represented LIS at the Road Map to Student Services event; part of First Year Orientation, which was held concurrently with the Academic Forum in Kenyon. Half of the incoming First Year class attended the Forum while the other half were given “Passports” and asked to collect stickers from each Student Services station they visited (after which they were rewarded with a “frozen novelty”). Then they switched, and the students who had already attended the Forum attended the Road Map event. Since Pij and I handed out a sticker to every student with whom we spoke during the 2.5 hour event, it was easy to keep track of how many we’d spoken with—over 80! No wonder my voice is a little hoarse today.

What kinds of questions did we field? Pij may have heard other questions, but I think by far the most common questions were relating to connecting to Wireless, installing Microsoft Office, and followed by general questions about how to find/check out books and other materials from the Library. Other questions I heard ranged from “What is LIS”, to “Do you have any job openings?”, to “Can you help me set up email on my smartphone?”. Quite a few students stopped by without specific questions, and Pij’s go-to prompt, “Have you been able to set up your computer okay?” was great at drawing out other concerns and questions. I copied her and used that question quite a few times, and also tried asking about their First Year Seminar courses, which gave me a chance to let them know that a Librarian was assigned to each course, as well as a Peer Mentor and explain about CTLR and how it was related to the Library.

All in all it was a great chance to meet new students, hear how things were going for them, and also learn (from Pij) what to say about some of the most common tech-troubleshooting questions. It also underscored for me how essential it was for Pij and I (as LIS representatives) to be fully up-to-speed on recent and forthcoming changes in technology infrastructure and research tools.