Author Archives: Doreen Bernier

Area Director Meeting Notes from March 29, April 5th and April 12th

Area Director’s Meeting April 12, 2012

Present:  Mike Roy, Carol Peddie, Chris Norris, Mary Backus and Doreen Bernier

The Optional All-LIS Meeting on April 19th will be titled “Customer care and feedback: techniques and tips discussed”, given  by Jess Isler.  It will be held in LIB145 at 3:00.

Last week’s team assessment sessions with Fred Schmitt were discussed.  Teams need clarity and agreement on the following issues:

  •     Clarify team charges and scope
  •     Communication schedule
  •     Prioritization of goals
  •     Resources, staffing and budget
  •     Clarify roles
  •     Team membership, or if we even still need a team

 The Security Team needs a new charge.

Future team assessment will be done on a team by team basis, with open discussion by team sponsor.  Sheila Andrus might be asked to facilitate future meetings.

The rest of the meeting time was devoted to discussing  the results of last week’s team assessment of the AD team and how to use those results to improve the team, moving forward.

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AD meeting Notes from April 5, 2012

Present:  Mike Roy, Shel Sax, Mary Backus, Terry Simpkins and Doreen Bernier

Mary presented to the ADs, a recommendation from Education and Training Team to modify language regarding technology skills for every job description in LIS. The recommended language to be included is as follows:

“Demonstrate proficiency in general computing skills, such as e-mail, word processing, and use of web-based applications and resources.

Ability to operate in a networked computer environment, including the appropriate use of file storage, understanding security best practices, and a willingness and ability to develop new competencies”.

The ADs have approved this language change.  This topic will be brought to the managers for discussion.

The AD Retreat has been cancelled for this month.

Upcoming agenda items:

  • Digital scholarship-presentation.conversation with Rebekah Irwin
  • Update on MIIS infrastructure project
  • Web Team discussion on needs analysis and usability testing activities and a communication/awareness plan to share results and presentation materials to LIS

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AD Minutes from March 29, 2012
Present:  Mike Roy, Mary Backus, Carol Peddie, Chris Norris and Doreen Bernier

Management Training – the next steps.  The ADs talked about how to proceed now that the management training sessions are completed.  How do we apply what was learned to LIS?  This topic will be brought to the Workgroup Leaders at the next Manager’s meeting for discussion.

In January Mike prepared and published  the first LIS Quarterly Report which included highlights of projects over a three month period.  This week Mike distributed his second installment report covering January-March to the ADs for their review.  The report contents were discussed and edits were made to this very comprehensive document.

Reminder to Managers to prepare the Annual Report write-up for their workgroups.  The write-up should be one-page in length and submitted to Doreen Bernier by June 30th.  The deadline for statistics is July 10th.

LIS Blog – How do we communicate newsworthy topics to the community?   This topic will also be brought to the managers to discuss.

Area Directors Meeting Notes – March 22, 2012

Present:  Mike Roy, Carol Peddie, Terry Simpkins, Chris Norris and Doreen Bernier

Also visiting:  Space Team members Hans Raum, Joseph Watson, Todd Sturtevant and Peggy Fischel

The Space Team joined the ADs to discuss plans for the possible use of 118 South Main Street for LIS staff offices.  The Space Team will need to take in consideration office space for new hires for both phase 1 and 2 of the LIS staffing plan, and also plan for the return of the upper level offices for the faculty use.  A tour of the facility will be arranged for the Space Team to see if it could fill our space needs. As mentioned in last week’s AD notes, the lower level of the building is currently available and could house 8-9 staff members.  (To be clear, the decision about whether or not we can use the space is a decision that the campus space committee will make.)

Who handles assessments?   Since Carol has taken on the directorship of Enterprise Applications, who will handle assessments?  Terry will take on all surveys, except for Educause, which Carol will continue to handle.

Annual Reports and Goal Setting for next year.
·         Annual Report:  All written materials need to be submitted by June 30th, with statistics being submitted by July 10th.
·         Goals:  all goals should also be in place by June 30th.  The ADs need to work up “smart” goals for their areas for the coming year.
·         Strategic Directions and Vision:  Time needs to be spent on polishing these documents and making sure they are aligned with the College goals.

Future agenda items:
1. How to communicate to all of LIS what we learned at management training

Area 51 Notes: 28 July 2011

Present:  Mike Roy, Mary Backus, Shel Sax, Chris Norris, Carol Peddie and Doreen Bernier

Topics discussed:

Video streaming: Mike indicated that there is a fair amount of interest by College Advancement to use video to reach alumni via the web.  After a lengthy discussion on this topic, the ADs decided to form a group to investigate how we can create workflow and processes for cross-campus use. Several questions need to be addressed like:

  • What’s the right format for video streaming and for archival purposes?   
  • How quickly could we move to a new standard (perhaps mp4)?
  • How might adopting a new standard impact our workflows?

Project directory move to “Roadmap”:   The timeline for changing over the current project directory to “Roadmap” was discussed.  It was decided that Chris Norris will provide training to workgroup leaders at the September Managers meeting so they can start to incorporate current project milestones into the new program.

Goals: The August Manager’s meeting will be devoted to workgroup goals.  We discussed how to link workgroups/teams goals to the larger institutional mission and incorporating them into the LIS strategic planning site/.

Google/MSlive:  The process for evaluating cloud service offerings discussed.  Draft documentation containing background information, scope and timeline are being prepared for presentation to President’s Staff. 

“The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media.” – A Talk by Bryan Alexander

May 25, 2011
noon – 1 pm
Ilsley Public Library Community Meeting Room

People have been creating digital stories since before the Web began, but only recently have so many powerful mediums for sharing these stories become available to the general population. Digital storytelling uses new media tools and platforms to tell stories. Author Bryan Alexander explains the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling, weaving images, text, audio, video, and music together. Bryan holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and taught English and information technology studies as faculty at Centenary College of Louisiana.

LIS Priorities: Fall 2010

In order to ensure that LIS and the community we serve have a shared understanding of our priorities, we regularly publish a summary of what we are focusing on. The intent is not to capture everything that we are doing, but rather to highlight what we see as the most important projects, issues, and initiatives. We’ve organized it into four categories.

  1. Evaluations highlight pilot projects and other ways that we are exploring new ways of delivering service
  2. Services, infrastructure, programs highlight those projects that will have the most obvious and direct impact on the community.
  3. Strategic planning highlight efforts that are longer-term and more abstract.
  4. Organizational development and assessment highlights activities that look at our organizational structure, workflow, communications, and efforts to assess and improve them.

This is the third installment of this document; previous installments can be found here: Spring 2010 and Summer 2010. Items new to the list are marked as new while items that have been removed from list are listed as such at the bottom of the document, as are items that we believe might make their way to the list in the future.

Continue reading

LIS Priorities: Summer 2010

In order to ensure that LIS and the community we serve has a shared understanding of our priorities, we regularly publish a summary of what we are focusing on. The intent is not to capture everything that we are doing, but rather to highlight what we see as the most important projects, issues, and initiatives. We’ve organized it into four categories. Evaluations highlight pilot projects and other ways that we are exploring new ways of delivering service, Services, infrastructure, programs highlights those projects that will have the most obvious and direct impact on the community. Strategic planning highlights efforts that are longer-term and more abstract. Organizational development and assessment highlights activities that look at our organizational structure, workflow, communications, and efforts to assess and improve them. This is the second installment of this document; the first installment is here. Items new to the list are marked as new while items that have been removed from list are listed as such at the bottom of the document, as are items that we believe might make their way to the list in the future.

A complete list of all projects LIS is engaged in can be found at https://sites.google.com/a/middlebury.edu/pd/all-projects-list Continue reading