Category Archives: Post for MiddPoints

ITS Tech Services Overview Offered December 11 – for New (or not-so-new) Hires

Information Technology Services (ITS) offers a monthly workshop with recent hires in mind called “ITS & You:  Technology Services Overview.”  The next session will be held Wednesday, December 11 at 9:00 a.m.  We’ll introduce services and resources provided by ITS to all Middlebury employees, including:  online learning, file storage, self-service software installation, access to  computing help, and more.  The workshop format will be a presentation with questions entertained along the way, followed by an optional half hour for hands-on assistance with specific questions.

To sign up, please use our online form.  Although geared toward new or recent hires, everyone is welcome to attend – you might surprise yourself with an “aha” moment or two.

Next month’s session will be held on Wednesday, January 15, 2020, at 1:30 pm.  Our complete workshop schedule can be viewed at http://go/techworkshops/.

New Video Tutorial for 2019: Citation For People Who Hate Citation!

Middlebury Libraries is happy to unveil our newest video tutorial for 2019: Citation For People Who Hate Citation. This is a big-picture look at citation: why we do it, what it’s for, and how to make it an easier, stress-free process. Big thanks to Middlebury students Emma Román ’22 and Kayla Moore ’22 for their participation! You can watch the video here, or find it at go/CitationForPeople/.

Open Access Week: What is It?

Open Access Week is an international event that raises awareness of the many benefits of making research free and open for others to use. This year’s theme is “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge,” which asks libraries and researchers around the world to consider how they will create and support platforms for sharing knowledge that are “inclusive, equitable, and truly serve the needs of a diverse global community. Asking ourselves and our partners ‘open for whom?’ will help ensure that considerations of equity become and remain central… .”

At Middlebury, we are considering “open for whom?” through two goals for the upcoming year: expanding our efforts to support campus-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; as well as identifying our role in building and sustaining the infrastructure required for digital scholarship.

Other open access efforts at Middlebury include:

  • Digital Collections at Middlebury, our open-source repository that houses digitized works from our archives, along with student theses, scientific datasets, and faculty open access articles.
  • The Open Access policy, adopted by faculty in 2016, grants the college a license to republish scholarly essays by faculty in our online repository.
  • Lever Press, a consortial open access publisher focusing on “digital-first” online scholarly monographs. 
  • An examination of digital scholarship infrastructure, supported by a Mellon grant and led by Dean of the Library Mike Roy (along with a multi-school team of library professionals), with the goal of envisioning a more modern and sustainable system that would enhance scholarly communication at colleges, universities, and research libraries. 

Finally, are you wondering where to find open access research? Here are a few places to look:

Bye-bye Summon, Hello LibrarySearch

LibrarySearch allows you to search our catalog of physical books and all our digital resources at the same time.

The Library has hundreds of databases, indexes and catalogs, providing access to millions of articles, books, films, musical recordings and primary sources.  That sounds promising… until it sounds overwhelming. Where should you start your research? We used to recommend Summon, but over the summer, we replaced Summon with LibrarySearch.  

Like its predecessor Summon, LibrarySearch is a great place to begin your research.  That’s because LibrarySearch links you to nearly everything in our collections. And, we think LibrarySearch is even better than Summon at matching results to your search terms.

We’re still straightening out some of the kinks with our new discovery service.  For example, LibrarySearch is linking to materials at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and it is not linking to many of our online newspapers. So as always, please get in touch with a librarian if you’re not finding what you need.

Next time you’re starting a research project, try LibrarySearch! Look for it at the center of the Library home page, or at go.middlebury.edu/librarysearch

Deaccessioning Project Formally Begins

This fall, the Library will be starting a multi-year review of our circulating monograph collection in Davis Family Library that will identify titles we can safely remove from our collection. The project was discussed with department heads and chairs last spring. A web guide is available with much more information, including definition of the materials under review (spoiler alert: only circulating books, and nothing else). We are doing this for several reasons:

  1. The Davis Family Library’s shelves are functionally full. While you’ll see empty or partially filled shelves in places, a library needs to keep roughly 20% of its shelf space clear in order to reshelve and shift books, which is necessary when we acquire new materials.
  2. The collection has not been systematically reviewed as a whole in decades, and we have on our shelves materials that are outdated, superseded, and/or no longer relevant to Middlebury’s academic program.
  3. The library is short on study rooms and other usable spaces for students and faculty.

The process will be deliberative and consultative, and we invite your participation. Here is how the process will unfold:

  1. We have analyzed the 600,000 titles in Davis Family Library and automatically marked for retention titles that were recently acquired or heavily used, or which we must retain due to our consortial obligations. This reduced the number of titles under consideration for withdrawal to 229,000. 
  2. We have created a website (Monograph Deselection Project) that lists all of the titles under consideration, organized by subject, where you can see details about each title, including its usage history, date of publication, and more.
  3. Starting this fall, librarians will review the titles under consideration for withdrawal, and will make preliminary decisions about which titles to remove.
  4. As these preliminary reviews are completed, we will share with departments and other interested faculty our recommendations on which titles to remove, and provide you a chance to weigh in.
  5. Some materials may be moved into Special Collections if they have acquired an historical or other kind of value, rather than being withdrawn outright.

We’ll conduct these reviews in batches over the course of the next few years. Your Library Liaison will let you know when collections pertinent to your academic field(s) are under review. Because many faculty teach and do research in areas outside their departmental homes, we also invite those who wish to review any particular subjects to let us know via http://go.middlebury.edu/listrequest so that we can inform you when that subject is being reviewed.

Collection review is a critical part of the work of sustaining a vital, vibrant, and relevant print collection. While we recognize that it is daunting to make hard decisions about the importance of hundreds of thousands of titles, we have created, with useful help from consultations with chairs and with our advisory committee, what we think is a simple and straightforward process that provides you with the opportunity to give us valuable input into these decisions. Again, much more information is available on the project’s web guide.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Announcing the New Library Website

New library website
Home page of the new library website

You’re right, things look a little different this week! We’re excited to announce the launch of our new library website. We’ve streamlined and reorganized our content, and we’re now mobile-friendly! We hope it’ll be even easier for you to find what you need, and to discover useful and inspiring resources that you didn’t even know to ask for.

Please note that the site, though live, is not quite in its final form. We’ll be making minor upgrades and revisions in the coming weeks.

Many thanks to the Library Website User Experience Team, Library Website authors, and, last but not least, our colleagues at the Office of Communications!

Now, go ahead and update your bookmarks to point to: http://go.middlebury.edu/lib . We’ll see you there!

Stewart Lane portrait photo

Goodbye Stewart Lane!

Stewart Lane is retiring on June 14th, after 25+ years of service!
Stewart has been the real embodiment of a Media Services and ITS staff. Courteous, expedient and willing to take on any task, from helping a faculty with their laptop in a classroom, to screening Hirschfield films on late nights, to running a video camera, to supervising our students, to redesigning a classroom and programming lighting systems. He’s been a real go-getter, with a can-do attitude! I can’t count the emails and other positive feedback that I’ve received for him from customers over the years.

Stewart would like to thank Norm Cushman and Bryan Merril for giving him a job and a chance to become part of Middlebury back in the 90s.

We will miss you dearly Stewart, especially your dedication to work, as well as your cheer and lightheartedness.

A tip of the hat to Stewart!

Some of the kind words of thanks that Stewart has received over the years:

  • …phenomenal! #epic…
  • Thank you for your swift and diligent support. This was an excellent service provided.
  • “…incredible effort you have put in to get ready for this year’s Fest. There are so many fabulous films that are screening at Dana…”
  • It’s been great working with you over the years…
  • Many thanks for the timely save yesterday–I’m glad you and Jen remained unflappable.
  • took a lot of pressure off of my shoulders.
  • terrific
  • We’re very fortunate here to get such personal attention from you and other Support staff!!
  • thank you for your help and patience
  • thank you again very much for going above and beyond the call of duty
    heartfelt thanks to you
  • It’s a pleasure to work with such professional and capable colleague
  • thank you for saving me last week with that screening
  • Thank you SO much for being patient with the laptop and us, non-techies.

Customer Purchases of Technology

Great news!  College faculty and staff can purchase many computer peripherals directly through Oracle Finance purchasing system.  Purchasing with this new system gives you the ability to price, budget, order, and directly receive items.  In addition, you will be able to track shipping and confirm charges are correct. We are here to guide, and recommend items you might be looking for; feel free to give us a call or email the ITS Helpdesk.  The Middlebury College Bookstore also has many accessory items in stock and can direct you to what will work for your setup.  

PURCHASE THROUGH ITS

Although you can purchase your own office peripherals, cables, and such, please remember you must work with ITS on purchases of computers, tablets, specialty monitors, and printers, as well as projectors, network switches, software, and TVs.  This will ensure you receive educational discounts, proper licensing, and appropriate warranties on college-supported equipment.  College funded computer purchases must be coordinated with Information Technology Services (ITS) prior to ordering, so ITS may review the specifications to ensure the equipment is compatible with the Middlebury College environment plus confirm in-house support is available.  For example, there are items ITS does not support, like departmentally purchased printers, or non-standard model computers.

PURCHASE ON YOUR OWN

We have put together a list of common accessories our campus customers have requested and we have tested.  Because items come and go in availability, and pricing changes, this list may go out of date.  Like I said, feel free to check in with the Middlebury College Bookstore or with us at the ITS Helpdesk, we are here to help.