Tag Archives: Middlebury

New Old Images of Middlebury

Recently, thanks to a tip from the friend of a friend we purchased some antique stereoscope views of Middlebury College and the Town of Middlebury in an online auction. (Shout out to the friend of Prof. Kevin Moss!)

Main Street Middlebury, looking northeast, before the great fire, circa 1880.
Notice the high meadows on Chipman Hill behind the church steeple.

Stereoscope cards hold two identical photographs, mounted side by side and slightly offset. When they’re viewed through a stereoscope viewer, a three dimensional image emerges.

A state of the art and thrilling parlor entertainment throughout the late nineteenth century, these rare images don’t need to be viewed in stereo to be appreciated online today.

*Main St. looking west over Otter Creek after a fire obliterated most of the buildings in the picture above.*

*Old Stone Row viewed from the top of Kitchel House, 1881*

*Old Stone Row taken in front of Starr Hall, circa 1880*

*We were initially thrown off by this house due to the view of Chipman Hill in the distance. A little sleuthing confirmed a 19th century snapshot of the Weybridge House*

*Weybridge House on the corner of College St. compared to today*

*The cards all appear to be from the studio of O. C. Barnes*

Middlebury women take a snowy ride up to Ripton, ca. 1940s

In this clip, members of the Women’s Forum of Middlebury College load up holiday gifts into a truck parked behind Forrest Hall, en route to the Meeting House in Ripton, VT. Upon their arrival in Ripton, local children run (and slide, trudge, and sled) to meet them. The Middlebury women, joined by a costumed Santa, distribute their holiday gifts.

Established in 1937, the Women’s Forum was itially organized to further interest in economic, political, and social issues of the day. In 1944 the group merged with the Student Action Assembly to focus on social and service work. This clip dates likely dates from the early to mid 1940’s.

Happy holidays from Special Collections & Archives.

New Special Collections Summer Hours

A change in Summer Hours for Special Collections on the Lower Level of the Davis Family Library was approved by the LIS Area Directors at their recent meeting. The following hours will be in effect immediately:

Tuesday, May 31-Thursday, June 2 By Appointment Only

Friday, June 3 Open 1-5 p.m. for Reunion Weekend

Saturday, June 4 Open 10 a.m.-2 p.m. for Reunion Weekend

June 5-19 CLOSED

Monday, June 20-Friday, August19 By Appointment Only

Monday, August 22-Friday, September 2 CLOSED

CLOSED WEEKENDS DURING THE SUMMER

Are you reading this post via a feed reader? If so, read on…

On Tuesday May 31st we’re going to change the categories on this blog, so if by any chance you’re using a feed of a specific category, that’s going to break. We suggest subscribing to the whole blog for maximum enjoyment! If you’re not a LIS staff member & would like to filter out the more staff related posts, you can subscribe to the new “Middlebury Community Interest” category after May 31st. The other categories will be “LIS Staff Interest”, and “Post for MiddPoints” which will cause the post to be added to the MiddPoints blog too. All the old categories except “The Essentials” will be converted to tags for easy searching.
The LIS Web team developed this new scheme, following recommendations that came out of the open meeting about the future of the LIS Blog (including a call for simplified categories). The AD Team reviewed and approved these changes. We welcome your comments.

WordPress feeds can now include pages

During the past few years new versions of WordPress have made this system much easier to use — and our community has made use of these new abilities to make a wide range of sites structured in many ways.

Most of the content in WordPress sites are Posts, chronologically ordered entries that make up a ‘blog’ or news site. Pages on the other hand, are non-time-dependent content that can be arranged in a hierarchy. Traditionally, Pages in WordPress sites were used mostly for describing the blog, contact information, or other content that rarely changes and isn’t ‘newsworthy’. (more on Posts vs. Pages)

Recently, a number of sites have been making increasingly large use of Pages, such as to hold curricular resources that are then referenced from Posts describing assignments that use them. For sites that make significant use of Pages, site-owners can now enable the RSS Includes Pages plugin so that new pages are added to your site’s main feed. For course sites in WordPress, enabling this plugin will allow page additions to be fed into the Course Hub as updates.

We still recommend making use of Posts in WordPress sites to share new material with readers rather than heavily using Pages as Pages are still second-class citizens in many ways (such as support for tagging and categorization). With the new RSS Includes Pages plugin, Page-heavy sites can now feed new content to the Course Hub and others subscribed to their feeds.

Wireless in the dorms

There are approximately 60 buildings classified as dorms here at Middlebury providing beds to over 2400 students in 5 Commons. From a ‘wireless’ perspective these dorms can be divided into three broad groups in terms of how many Wireless Access Points or WAPs they have:

those that have moderate coverage
those that have minimal coverage, typically in lounges only
smaller houses that require only one or two WAPs

Continue reading →

Bibliography of children’s and young adult books set in Vermont

The Green Mountain Sampler,” has been updated. On this fifty-page list are all the books that the Department of Libraries owns that are set in Vermont, or about Vermont or Vermonters. This is not a selected, recommended list, but rather an all inclusive one. It is here. (From VTlibraries listserv).

Google Analytics Workshops

Beginning in December, Chris Norris will be offering a series of Google Analytics workshops for LIS staff. These workshops will cover the basics of how Google Analytics works and how this data can be used to better understand (and help improve) the online services that we provide to the community. The first workshop will be held on Thursday, December 9^th, 2010 in Davis Family Library 105 from 1:30p to 2:30p. If you are interested in attending, please email Chris at cnorris@middlebury.edu.