Tag Archives: LIS

Spring Symposium

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An information session for participants in this year’s Spring Symposium was held on Wednesday night, and I attended on behalf of LIS.  I shared our new Resources for Presenters site, which outlines the support that LIS and the CTLR offer.  LIS will provide workshops on making maps and posters, feedback on practice run-throughs of oral presentations, and assistance with PowerPoint.  In addition, the CTLR will run two public speaking workshops.  The Undergraduate Research Office is expecting about 130 students to participate in this year’s symposium, which is scheduled for Friday, April 17 from 1-6 pm in McCardell Bicentennial Hall.  This is the third annual Spring Symposium, and participants from previous years consistently report that it was a significant and rewarding experience.  All presentations are open to the public.

LIS TEAMS

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Candidates for New Teams (with sponsor in italics)

We will begin the roll-out of new teams by choosing from the list below three or four teams to start with.

  1. Curricular Technologies (Peddie )
  2. Digital Archives/Collections/Library services (Simpkins)
  3. Information Security  (Cutter)
  4. Language Schools/Bread Loaf/MMLA support  (Roy)
  5. LIS Web presence  (Rehbach)
  6. Training/Workshops (including internal LIS cross-training)  (Backus)

The names listed to the right of each team above is the team sponsor.  The sponsor’s role is to help provide a framework for the team and the resources needed to ensure the teams success, but the sponsor is not the team leader.


If you are interested in being a part of one of these teams, please contact the team sponsor with the following information:

  • why you are interested in this team,
  • a brief outline of the projects/activities/services you think the team should pursue.
  • if you would like to be considered for the role of team leader, please mention that and also submit a draft charge for the team
  • you may also nominate others for membership and leadership of a team.
  • please make your interest known by Friday February 20th.
  • please note: in some cases, we may ask people to join a team who haven’t volunteered!

We’ll announce the first round of teams, team leaders, and team members shortly thereafter.  We’ll post more detailed information — including expectations for team members, team leaders, and team sponosors — soon on the LISt blogspace.

Existing Committees and other team-like things

Here is a list of groups that already exist that are team-like in their approaches and membership; we expect that as we move forward with our roll-out of more formal teams, these groups will be included in our list of ‘formal’ teams. (If there are other team-like things not on this list, let us know and we’ll add them.)

  • Library Hours
  • LIS Green Team
  • Social Committee
  • Institutional Repository Working Group (IRWG)
  • Emergency Management Committee
  • Reference Collection Advisory Group
  • Info Desk
  • Collection Development advisory group
  • Browsing team
  • E-newsletter
  • Special Collections
  • Music Library
  • Science Library
  • Government Docs

Teams Proposed to be formed later

Because we want to be thoughtful in how we manage the balance of responsibilities within teams and the responsiblities within workgroups and areas, we want to begin with a small number of teams, and then once we better understand how to do this, to launch additional teams. Teams that we intend to pursue later in the process include:

  • Communications (include Orientation planning/info/documentation)
  • General Web development, innovations, support (incl. ADA/universal access)
  • Service Points (incl. Information Desk)
  • Space Utilization (incl. ADA/universal access; classroom/lounge “tech infrastructure”)
  • Audio-Video capture/edit/distribution
  • Databases & Data Warehousing
  • GIS services

As part of this initiative, we will be developing a series of trainings that will allow staff  impacted by this to learn more about  managing work through teams. This includes training on the definitions of roles on teams, communication strategies, project management techniques, and conflict resolution. As this progresses, we will keep everyone informed about these professional development opportuntities.

Holiday Buffet for LIS Student Employees

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Save the date!
Thursday Dec 4
Lib 105
1:15 – 5 pm

holiday food
Open to all LIS student employees.
Last year work groups in User Services combined forces and traditions to honor our student employees with a holiday buffet. Staff brought in buffet items, sweet and savory, and signed up for “shifts” to host the buffet. It was a a really fun event – students stopped by as their busy schedules allowed and staff were on hand to meet and greet and keep the buffet stocked.
This year we’d like to extend the invite to all LIS student employees.
Lisa T and Maura C are in charge of planning. Please contact them with any questions or ideas.

Statistics from Library Systems

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Submitted by Mike Lynch

  • How many times per hour does Midcat get searched, on average?  340
  • What’s the busiest hour of the day for the catalog? 3:00 p.m.
  • How many times did an EBSCO search refer our users to Academic OneFile for the full-text of the article last fiscal year? 378
  • How many times did users go through WebBridge to get to Project Muse last year? 284
  • Where did Mike get all these numbers from anyway? From statistics that Barbara has been compiling from various sources.
  • Can I see them for myself? Sure. Just go to O:\ORGS\LIS\LISstaff\ILS III Millennium User Materials\OPAC statistics

Conference Report – Space 2.0: Small-Scale Library Redesign Projects

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Submitted by Brenda Ellis

Space 2.0: Small-Scale Library Redesign Projects
October 3rd Dartmouth Conference, 2008-10-09

Attendees: Brenda Ellis, Carrie Macfarlane (presenter), Brendan Owens (co-presenter), Joy Pile, Jean Simmons, Elin Waagen, Joseph Watson

Carrie & Brendan’s presentation: http://dspace.nitle.org/handle/10090/6141

All other presentations available at : http://www.dartmouth.edu/~biomed/services.htmld/OctCon2008/index.shtml

Elin’s notes are on the circulation blog: http://sites.middlebury.edu/circservices/2008/10/13/darmouth-october-conference-space-20-small-scale-library-redesign-projects/

Informal summary of highlights (combined notes from Jean, Brenda, Joy, Joseph, Carrie) Continue reading →

Question: Why don’t you keep the book jackets on books?

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Answer: (provided by Joseph Watson) We understand and agree that some book jackets are desirable, but to be pragmatic, especially in these times of tight budgets, we do not feel like we can justify the extra time and expense required to retain the jackets permanently. The old fashioned library answer might be “Book jackets are used by the publisher to sell the book in a book store setting and they are not necessary in an academic research setting where most people consult the library catalog to find books rather than browsing the shelves.” and to a great extent this is still true. In fact, we recently enhanced the catalog so it is now possible to view book covers, dust jackets, author biographies, table of contents, and sometimes even reviews for most newly published books. Dust jackets stay with the book until it is removed from the New Books shelf and anyone borrowing the book at that point is welcome to keep the jacket. Discarded jackets are left for reuse on a bulletin board near LIB140… they’re great for making collages or decorating dorm rooms.

New Video and Laptop Viewing Equipment at Armstrong Library

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Submitted by Judy Watts

Students asked, and we provided!

Thanks to Dean Cadoret and others, Armstrong Library group study rooms now have equipment for video and laptop viewing.  For computer use, researchers can bring their own laptops or check out a laptop from the Circulation Desk.  For videos, a DVD player/VCR is already in the room.

This is another outcome based on feedback received from the Post-It note bulletin board Carrie MacFarlane did at Armstrong last year. Carrie and Brendan Owen, Digital Media Intern, will be doing a presentation on this effort next week at The October Conference , Space 2.0 : Small-Scale Library Redesign Projects, at Dartmouth.

Nice teamwork, Carrie and Brendan!

Update from Administrative Systems

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Submitted by Marcella Smith

Here’s what we’re doing:
Team

* Working on change management methodology for the lockdown project
* Hyperion System 9 preparations
* Banner 8 research, new functionality investigation, and database cleanup

Dave

* In a cooperative effort between the Administrative Systems group, Database Applications and Systems group, the Budget Office and the CCAL office, a new application for student organization budget reports was put into place for the start of fall term (as reported in the recent issue of Unbound).
* Developing new journal upload for Reprographics
* Working with Facilities Services to get P-card file uploaded to FAMIS
* Analysis of load process for potential loading of Monterey budget adjustments
* Applying Banner patches to all Banner modules (version 7)</
* Acting as change management lead for promoting objects into Production database

Cindy

* Analyzing and preparing data for Monterey general student data load to enable programmatic email account generation
* Implementing Banner security, review and cleanup of Banner Student module access
* Cleaning up Hyperion folders, removing unused reports, removing outdated access to reporting groups
* Developed new Hyperion dashboard for Donna McDurfee in the office of Academic Affairs

Liane

* In conjunction with Karin Hall-Kolts in the office of the Dean of the College, implementing the 4/2 residential life system in the Commons (junior and senior room designations will be tracked with a singular commons code scheme).
* Setup access to housing reports for Keith Bishop in Public Safety
* Working with other LIS staff to resolve directory population issues

Julie

* Open Enrollment changes and enhancements for 2009
* Spending a significant amount of time on the Hyperion and Banner upgrades (learning about what’s changing and database cleanup work
* Set up scripts to enable the Student Employment Coordinator to terminate student jobs en masse at the end of the summer
* Researching problems, assisting HR with cleanup of data entered incorrectly, and changes to move from summer to fall term

Rogelio

* Conducted workshop on how to identify and correct Banner duplicate person records, which was very popular and well-attended by staff from Admissions, Registrar’s Office, College Advancement, Language Schools, Bread Loaf School of English, and LIS
* Analysis and research for Monterey general student data load to enable programmatic email account generation
* Assisting John Nordmeyer in resolution of duplicate person data, debugging SQL code used in Hyperion reports, and changes to the Alumni Program application
* Educating himself on the Student Employment module and the payroll data feed to the Financial Aid module; working with Student Financial Services to develop a way to ensure award amounts are not exceeded when work study funds are exhausted
* Training users in the Bread Loaf School of English; resolving change of term issues on inquiry reports; correcting duplicate person data

John

* Developing two new applications for Public Safety, Open Container Citations and Fire Safety Violations, which will include new Oracle forms, shell scripts, and several PL/SQL scripts to post fines to the Banner Accounts Receivable module

Marcy

* Banner 8 work has begun with the build of a new database with UTF8 character set; installation and testing of new Oracle application server software; cleanup and reorganization of tablespaces; testing a new Pro C compiler which Mark installed for us on diamond
* Managing work for lockdown project (creation and maintenance of Oracle data privileges and developing Banner change management process)
* Automating startup of Banner java payment client for Banner credit card processing
* Implementing Financial Aid Self Service as a separate product (for delivery of upgrades independent of the Student Self Service product
* Attended NERCOMP IT Manager’s Workshop in Boston
* Setup and review of Banner accounts for student work study employment across campus