Submitted by Carrie Macfarlane
We won’t be offering LISterine workshops for the remainder of the summer, but don’t let that prevent you from freshening your professional perspective. Stay Fresh! Here’s how…
LISterine Workshops
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Tag Archives: Liaisons
Recent additions to the Vermont Collection
Submitted by Hans Raum
Earlier this month I attended the annual convention of the Rutland Railroad Historical Society, held at the Vermont Marble Museum in Proctor on May 2-3. I accepted donations of historical material from three members and took photographs of several marble quarries and railroad bridges that I visited during one of the field trips. The oldest item that was donated to the Rutland Railroad Archives that is part of our Vermont Collection was an 1851 annual report of the Rutland & Burlington Railroad, which was the earliest ancestor of the Rutland Railroad.
The advent of railroads in Vermont was crucial to the economic development of the state, including the marble, granite, slate, lumber and dairy industries.
Information Behavior of Researchers – Myths of a Google Generation
Submitted by Judy Watts
A January 2008 report by a research team (CIBER) at University College London for the British Library and JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee that promotes the use of academic IT in the UK, shows that while most young people in the US and UK are completely at home with computers, they rely on the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information they find on the web. The report ‘Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future’ also shows that traits commonly associated with younger users – impatience in search and navigation, zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs – are becoming the norm for all age-groups, from young students through undergraduates to professors. The study warns that young people are dangerously lacking in informations skills and presents the challenges for library and information services in meeting the needs of researchers.
The Executive Summary of the report is a good read (and worth a look just for the cover graphic). You can find the full report here, and more recent publications of the JISC group, e.g., Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World, are listed here.
New WordPress Theme
I have been working on a new WordPress theme for use at Middlebury. I wanted to create a flexible theme that could be used for a variety of sites or could be used to evolve a small simple site into a larger more complex one. I also wanted to create a theme with options similar to those found in Segue, to encourage Segue users to try out WordPress.
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LISterine Workshop: Entering the World of Mashups
Submitted by Bryan Carson and Carrie Macfarlane
The next LISterine Workshop (LIS Technology, Endeavors, and Resources in Need of Explanation) has been scheduled. On Tuesday, May 19, from 4-5 pm in Library 105, Digital Media Tutors and LIS-GIS Team members Jue Yang and Jack Cuneo will present Entering the World of Mashups. Watch your inbox for an invitation.
Want to present a workshop? Want someone else to present? Tell us!
Trial access to IMF statistical databases
Submitted by Brenda Ellis
Wonder how we get new library databases? Librarians are inundated by offers for new databases as well as offers to migrate existing resources to online versions or new platforms, which we investigate for relevancy to the curriculum, ease of use, cost, etc. The publishers often give us “trial” access for online resources so we can try before we buy. We currently get a number of statistical publications from the IMF (Int’l Monetary Fund) in print format and/or CD-Rom. We have trial access to the online versions until May 31st. (single user access to the online should cost about the same as what we currently pay for print/cd-roms). Try them out and see if you can figure out how to use them. Comments to me are welcome. Here are the databases:
International Financial Statistics
These are also on the Economics Subject Guide go/econguide and the new databases/trials page go/trials
Exhibit: Frances Dee and the Commodification of the Hollywood Star
Submitted by Brenda Ellis
Axinn Center Winter Garden continuing through August 31st.
Description:
The process of commodification required the frequent reworking of promotional materials devoted to extending a film and its stars pervasively into the public sphere. This exhibit offers more than one hundred representative materials employed by Hollywood studios in marketing not only her films but actress Frances Dee as a star. They include the most common items — posters, lobby cards, photographs, press books, heralds, fan magazines, etc. — to the more obscure — cigarette cards, matchbooks, photoplay editions of novels, film novelizations in magazine format, study guides, playing cards, makeup kits, Coca-Cola trays, dress patterns, and paper dolls. In selecting these materials, a conscious effort has been made to document that Hollywood marketing campaigns were aimed not solely to American filmgoers but to a vast international audience, from Europe to Asia to Latin and South America, who eagerly consumed Hollywood films and their stars.
Have a question for LIS? Text Us!
Submitted by Brenda Ellis
If you are based in the main library, you may have noticed signs advertising this new service (I’m campus mailing color signs to the branches today). A company called Mosio offers a “text a librarian” service but we’re not calling it that but instead are using it for LIS in general. Our users can use a cell phone to anonomously text a message to the number 66746 but they must start the message with the word midd (this gets the messsage to us and not some other library). The message gets sent to a special webpage setup for us where we see the question and can respond backto their phone using our computers rather than a phone ourselves. Our responses are limited to 320 characters. Librarians are monitoring this for now and if a message comes in for another area of LIS, we can forward the message or act as intermediaries. A few people at the helpdesk (Shawn and the helpdesk students) and circ desk (Elin) have seen the system and I am happy to train anyone else who’d like to participate. We have this service free for a year, so we are trying it out to see how our users like it. If you have questions, just ask me.