Category Archives: middpoints

Mental Health Awareness Month

Literatures and Cultures Librarian Katrina Spencer interviews Madeline “Maddie” Hope, the Assistant Director of Health & Wellness Education, for Mental Health Awareness Month. Visit the Davis Family Library to engage with a thematic display on this topic. Credits go to Dr. Raquel Albarrán of the Department of Luso-Hispanic Studies and students Jayla Johnson, Class of 2021, and Myles Maxie, Class of 2022, for the display’s design. Special thanks to Barbara Walter, Kat Cyr, Laura Kearley and Joseph Watson.

Katrina Spencer (KS): Hi, who are you? How long have you been here? What do you do on campus?

Maddie Hope (MH): Hi! I’m Maddie Hope. I’ve worked at Middlebury since July of 2018. I am a Health Educator, which means I provide trainings, one-on-one discussions and programs about topics related to health and wellness for students. My areas of focus are mental health, alcohol use and cannabis use. Come visit me in the Health and Wellness Education Office on the second floor of the Service Building. We have a massage chair!

Assistant Director of Health & Wellness Education Maddie Hope provides answers to important questions.

KS: What do you know about the display in the Davis Family Library?

MH: I know the display is focused on decreasing stigma related to discussing mental health challenges and providing different resources that can be accessed for support.

KS: Why is it important to reduce stigma surrounding mental health and illness?

MH: So often when people are struggling with mental health, they are also having a hard time connecting to themselves or others and stigma, or judgment, can make this problem worse. Stigma about mental health and mental illness is often the largest barrier to seeking support and feeling understood. These are two of the most important curative factors for mental health challenges. When we seek to understand the challenges others are facing rather than meeting them with judgment, we pave the way for healing.

KS: What resources are available on campus? To students? Staff? Faculty?

MH: For students, there is the Parton Center for Health and Wellness. Students can choose to speak to a counselor or a health care provider for mental health support. To make an appointment with a counselor, students can call 802-443-5141, or visit their office on the third floor of Centeno House. You can also read about counseling staff on campus at go/counseling/. If students are interested in meeting with a health care provider, they can call 802-443-3290, or visit their office on the first floor of Centeno House to make an appointment.

For staff and faculty, Human Resources provides a confidential service called Employee and Family Assistance Program (EFAP) which can provide short-term counseling services on a variety of topics and serve as a referral source for more long term services. More information can be found at go/EFAP/ or by inquiring with Human Resources.

KS: Are there any mental health counselors of color? And if not, what can community members do when they are seeking cultural familiarity and competency in their mental health care services?

MH: The Counseling staff at Middlebury is predominantly white-identified, but the counseling center is commiting to actively recruiting counselors of a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds.

This can certainly be a challenge. Community members have a few options here. It might be valuable to consider beginning an online counseling relationship. It may be helpful to search for a clinician in your home community or in Burlington, VT. Some counselors may be open to meeting completely online, or have a few sessions in person and then offer online appointments.

A few resources for finding a therapist who can provide cultural familiarity include:

a screenshot of Therapy for Black Girls — A screenshot from the online directory Therapy for Black Girls

“Find a Therapist” tool through Psychology Today
“Therapist Directory” at Therapy for Black Girls
“Directory” at National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network

For additional reading and listening about how mental health challenges can be different for people of color consider the following:

University of Houston Coping with Race Related Stress
Just Jasmine Blog Self Care for People of Color After Emotional and Psychological Trauma
Podcast: Between Sessions

KS: Thank you for those resources above. How might the Health and Wellness Education Office and the Libraries collaborate in reducing the stigma surrounding mental health?

MH: Often the library can be a place students experience many overwhelming emotions (e.g. feeling fatigued from studying, experiencing frustration or hopelessness about assignments or workload). I can see some exciting potential to explore having consistent stress management events in the library for students, faculty and staff to enjoy. Providing opportunities to explore strategies to address overwhelming emotions together helps to show support for those who may have a hard time discussing mental health challenges with others.

KS: Brilliant. Thank you for your time. Students, keep a look out for the Health & Wellness Education’s Stressbusters Calendar out May 6th!

Audiobooks on OverDrive and You

What are audiobooks?

a librarian at desk — Literatures & Cultures Librarian Katrina Spencer poses at the Research Desk, modeling audiobook use with sex columnist Dan Savage’s American Savage.

Audiobooks on OverDrive are digital versions of a book, often a novel, that allow you to listen to a book’s text. Many come in downloadable MP3 format files and are therefore portable on many electronic devices like iPods. Sometimes the authors read their works to you with modest sound effects or other dramatizations of the story or action! Audiobooks can also be found on CDs in the Middlebury College Libraries’ collection. See a thorough listing here.

Why might I want use them?

If it’s hard to find still moments to sit down and open a print work or scroll through an ebook, audiobooks offer a hands-free alternative to the other formats. So, you can carry out household chores, drive, or even exercise while listening to an audiobook.

Where can I see what’s available?

*A screenshot representing a small sample of the ~200 audiobooks available at go.middlebury.edu/overdrive.*

In terms of what the Middlebury College Libraries holds on OverDrive, just visit go.middlebury.edu/overdrive for access to over 200 audiobooks. If you’re a Vermont resident and a holder of a public library card, you can access 5,000+ titles through the Green Mountain Library Consortium. See go.middlebury.edu/gmlc for more information and use your last name in all caps, ex. ALI, as your password.

Do you have any recommendations?

Book cover art for Eddie Huang’s memoir, Fresh Off the Boat

Yes, sure! But that depends on what you like. One of my favorite parts of my job is readers’ advisory. Look at the bolded type for genre:

If you want a psychological thriller in the realm of domestic noir, I recommend The Silent Wife.
If dystopian fantasy is what you’re into, Director of Access and Discovery Terry Simpkins and Library Associate Kat Cyr swear by N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Series.
If you want to access a classic and haven’t gotten around to it, Things Fall Apart is available.
Social justice? Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me is sure to please and enlighten. And Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed also deeply engages systemic injustice.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer lit? I really enjoyed Less. Dr. Marcos Rohena-Madrazo of the Department of Luso-Hispanic Studies is a big fan of Redefining Realness.
Humor? Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay.
Disability studies? Good Kings Bad Kings is on the docket.
Then there’s also historical non-fiction like The War Before the War.
Historical fiction? Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-prize winning The Underground Railroad is recommendable.
And we have memoirs like Michelle Obama’s Becoming— though you may have to wait awhile to get to this one. See my review of it in The Campus, in the meanwhile.
Oh, and if you’re studying a foreign language like Spanish, you’ve got about 10 works to choose from on OverDrive and several on CDs in many languages found in the foreign language browsing collection on the main level of the Davis Family Library.

There’s a lot out there!

How can I use them and what should I know about the app?

There are three basic steps for accessing audiobooks:

a flyer advertisement — A flyer with detailed instructions on how to use OverDrive’s audiobooks, a condensed version reproduced at left

Download the OverDrive app, create an original account and after signing in, add the Davis Family Library.
When prompted to sign in with a library card, accept, but use your Middlebury credentials instead.
Make a selection, borrow and manage your ebookshelf.

Also, when in doubt, you are welcome to ask a librarian for help or visit the guide found at go.middlebury.edu/ebookguide. With regard to the OverDrive app, there are some cool options like setting a timer for when you want the recording to stop playing, for example, if you’re getting in bed to sleep, and adjusting the speed of the player if you want to move through some text more quickly or more slowly than others. There’s some bookmarking, too.

Book cover art — Book covert art for Harriet McBryde Johnson’s Accidents of Nature

For how long can I borrow audiobooks?

There are two loan periods: 7 days and 14 days. Know that only one user will use each audiobook at a time. So, if desirable, you can place a hold on a work if you want to be in line for when a popular item is released. Check out up to three audiobooks at a time!

Last words?

They’ve changed my life, for the better. I hope they are of use to you, too. Also, to hear more from Middlebury audiobook users, see this week’s issue of The Campus.

Attention VPN Users! (Pulse Secure)

On January 31, 2019, Information Technology Services (ITS) will enable a feature on the Virtual Private Network (VPN) system that will detect if your VPN software needs to be upgraded to the latest release. If an upgrade is indicated, you will see a popup window from the Pulse Secure VPN application informing you that “An upgrade is available for Pulse Secure.” Please click on “Upgrade” to complete the upgrade process. Keeping the client up to date will ensure that all security updates have been applied.

Users of the older Juniper VPN client should note that the system tray icon has changed. The Pulse Secure client icon now looks like a fancy letter “S.”

Linux Users: The automatic upgrade isn’t offered for Linux; the new client can be downloaded manually from https://middfiles.middlebury.edu/software/public/VPN/

If you have concerns or issues with this upgrade please contact the Help Desk at http://go.middlebury.edu/helpme/, helpdesk@middlebury.edu, or 802-443-2200.

Update on New York Times access

You may be aware that we’ve had an access problem with the New York Times web site over the past few months. The short version of the issue is that SGA was providing online access until NYT discontinued that program…which no one on campus realized until our access ceased (there’s more detail in this Campus article). The Times’ new program is extremely expensive, and the library’s funding for this fiscal year was set last year. Partial access is still available; would that full access were, and we wish an immediate solution were at hand. We haven’t given up, though, and are still working on the problem. Please feel free to contact Douglas Black, Head of Collections Management, for more information.

Links to our remaining options for online access access to the NYT are in the Journals list New York Times. (You can get to this list on your own by clicking on the “Journals” tab on the library home page and searching for “new york times.”) For today’s paper, select “Global Newsstream,” a database that provides NYT articles with full text but without images. Need help? Ask a librarian.

Faculty: Are you grading research papers…

…and hoping they’ll be a little better next time? Talk with a librarian! We’d love to help you build more research and information literacy support into your spring semester classes. Our new InfoLit site describes what we do, and how it makes a difference. You’ll find assignment ideas, sample workshops, and of course, lots more prompts to talk with a librarian.

“Every student who met with you commented on how that meeting focused their work and led them to search the appropriate literature quickly and effectively.”
-Faculty feedback on library research consultations for students, Fall 2018

Interlibrary Loan Winter Break Service Update – 2018

Due to the holidays, shipping madness, the increased risk of losses, and the lack of open libraries willing to send things, the Interlibrary Loan Department limits ordering and shipping during the second half of December.

If you need anything before winter break request it now! Interlibrary loan requests submitted to ILLiad after Dec. 15th will be ordered in early January.

ILLiad article requests will continue to be filled by RapidILL through Dec. 22st, but requests must have a valid ISSN and year to be processed by Rapid.

Use Worldcat to find your citations and submit your loan requests!

Classroom Upgrades Fall ’18, Spring ’19 & Removal of VGA

Throughout the year Media Services is always working on improving the classrooms around campus. This ongoing process involves removing old technology and introducing new technology.

For the 2018 – 2019 academic year, new laser projectors that don’t require bulb changes or maintenance have been installed. Media Services will be eliminating VGA cables and installing AppleTV for AirPlay (wireless projection) from any Apple device. Go to go/airplay for instructions on how this works. The updated classroom instructions will also include instructions on how to operate AppleTV.

HDMI cables and Blu-ray players will remain.

If you have questions about the classroom upgrades, please reach out to Media Services.

The following classrooms will receive upgrades:

Fall Semester

CHT 107

CHT 109

FIC Fr 1

FIC Ck1

MBH 303

MBH 311

MBH 317

MBH 403

MBH 411

MBH 417

MBH 430

MBH 530

Spring Semester

AXN 100

AXN 103

AXN 104

AXN 109

AXN 219

AXN 220

AXN 229

LAFORCE 121

PEARSON MAX KADE

ROSS B11

SDL 110

You can now receive library circulation notices via text message

The library now offers patrons the option of receiving circulation notices via text message. If you choose to opt in, you will get overdue, hold pickup, and courtesy notices on your phone, in addition to via email. To opt in, login to My MIDCAT at go/renew, click the “Modify Personal Info” button, enter your mobile phone number, check the “Opt in” box, read the conditions, and click “Submit”. Opt out at any time by following the same procedure and unchecking the “Opt in” button. Contact library_circulation@middlebury.edu with any questions.