Author Archives: Jeffrey Rehbach

Educause Live webcast on Google Apps

Join us in LIB 145 on Thursday, April 22, at 1:00 pm, as we listen in on Macalester College’s experience with Google Apps, an Educause Live webcast.

“The Google Apps hosted e-mail solution continues to draw a great deal of interest from higher-education institutions. A recent informally planned conference call with a few interested institutions snowballed into a web conference with over a hundred institutions attending. Ted Fines and David Sisk will focus on Macalester’s experience with Google over the past two years of integrating, maintaining, and supporting Google Apps for their user community, with some analysis of why there is such high interest in Google’s hosted solution.”

Honoring Ron McKinnon

Many LIS staff members recently contributed to a collection we sent to Ilsley Public Library to honor our colleague Ron McKinnon. I also know that several colleagues sent contributions directly to Ilsley independently of this collection.  Here is a note I received from David Clark, director at Ilsley, at the end of March 2010, expressing his gratitude for the donation.  — Jeff Rehbach

March 29, 2010

Dear Jeff,
Please thank all the staff members who generously gave $355 collectively in memory of Ron McKinnon. I am sure that Janet and Roy [Ron’s wife and son] will appreciate your thoughtfulness.

As many of you know, Ron was a member of the library’s Board of Trustees and served as chair. We enjoyed working with him because he was so level headed and had such a terrific sense of humor; the same reasons, I’m sure, that so many of you felt him to be such a congenial colleague.

The use of the funds given in Ron’s memory will be announced in the May edition of our [Ilsley] newsletter.

Sincerely,

David Clark
Director

KeySurvey update

KeySurvey, our survey tool, will be moving to a “hosted” environment, beginning in June. The software, surveys, and results will reside on a system outside Middlebury.  Data privacy and security is assured as part of the arrangement. An advantage to this move is that software updates will be more frequent, allowing us to take advantage of improvements in the software more readily. Current users will continue to have access to KeySurvey for now using our local system, and for access to past surveys. Starting in June, all new surveys will be hosted remotely. Documentation on how to copy or export your existing surveys to the new environment will be provided later this spring. Many thanks to the 65 KeySurvey users who completed our recent KeySurvey survey about this product; we value the feedback you provided.

ETI Goal: Infrastructure

Goal Statement

Position LIS proactively to optimize existing infrastructure and new technologies to meet increasing needs and varied demands of our constituents, achieving as well ‘greener’ environment.

Deliverable

Create a comprehensive ETI infrastructure, networking and services 3-year plan.

Inventory of existing infrastructure / servers / services / systems upon which to build – update – replace for future systems. Continue reading →

ETI Goal: Service

Goal Statement

Clarify roles, responsibilities, and service levels in providing & troubleshooting systems & ETI services
(whom do people call when about what, and what is the response we provide?)

Deliverable

Effective technical documentation & training for systems / staff with whom we work (e.g., User Services & MIIS staff). Implement cross-ETI  project tracking & workflow. Continue reading →

ETI Goal: Administrative Efficiency

Goal Statement

Our staff will use their expertise to partner with others in LIS and a functional area (once selected) to achieve the LIS administrative efficiency strategic goal.

Deliverable

Systems & services are designed with self-service in mind.

ETI staff members will contribute their experience & expertise to work with users in College departments / areas to develop model(s) to enhance workflow, and data collection / storage / access. Models can then be rolled-out across campus. Continue reading →