Tag Archives: Teams

New Blog Theme

Adam reviewed the code for ShadowBox, the new WordPress theme I developed and installed it in on WordPress at Midd.  Of course, I immediately used it on our CT team blog and took advantage of some of its capabilities to give a sense of the new possibilities for layout and presentation that it introduces.

I should make it clear that this theme doesn’t introduce any functionality that other themes haven’t explored.  It is modeled first and foremost on Kubrick, the default WordPress theme.  In addition to this basic theme, I looked at a number of the most popular themes at wordpress.org including Atahualpa, Ahimsa, iNove to get a sense of the direction of theme development in the WordPress community.

I am hoping this will help us determine where we want to publish our work.  In particular, whether we want to merge all of our work into the new LIS blog and discontinue this blog or perhaps keep this blog around an example of innovative uses of WordPress…

Presenting the new LIS Blog

The LIS Web Team is pleased to announce the unified LIS blog, a new and effective way to communicate with both our colleagues in LIS and with our community of users.
As part of the LIS web site make-over, the Web Team – with the support of our AD’s and our team sponsor – recommended that our many LIS blogs be combined into one. LIS website feedback this summer indicated that staff wanted it to be easier to find relevant work updates, and we think that having a unified LIS blog will help meet this need. Continue reading →

MiddMedia now supports more video formats

I’ve just completed an update to our video hosting system, MiddMedia, to enable it to support the upload of additional video formats.

The Adobe Flash Media Server (FMS) — the software on MiddMedia that handles streaming the video data to clients — only supports the MP3 Audio (.mp3), Flash Video (.flv), and MPEG-4 video with H.264 encoding (.mp4) formats. Up until this point, users were required to convert their videos into one of the two supported video formats before uploading them to MiddMedia. Depending on the user’s operating system and the software they have installed, this could be a challenging proposition. With this update, videos in a variety of formats can be uploaded directly to the MiddMedia server where they will be automatically converted.
Continue reading →

Meeting Agenda Wed 9/23

Proposed meeting agenda Wed 9/23
Announcements etc.
How to launch the one-blog (categories and terminology should be resolved by now) – communication; training
Quick links – finalize how many and terminology

From previous agendas/discussions:
How will the LIS landing page point to the Blog?
Timeline – CMS freeze date for changes/additions
Updates on work with our contacts
Curricular Technology – where in the IA?
Wiki training for our primary contacts?
Permissions for primary contacts access on web makeover folder in middfiles?

From project timeline:
9/15 – Finalize platform improvement recommendations
9/28 – Web Makeover Check-in with Project Manager
9/28 – Drupal Training for Project Managers
10/1 – Design staff workflow for moving content. Get feedback.
Week of 10/6 – Web Makeover – completed workbook due

The One and Only – All Things LIS Blog

Voted yes on the one-blog readiness; will discuss how to launch at our next meeting.
Current categories listed below. Any change before we move ahead?

External Audience – term used TBD by vote by Fri 9/18 at 5 pm

Areas and Workgroups – use name of area as the category and use functions of the work area as tags (audience is mostly internal)

* Academic Consulting Services – research support, instruction, liaison
* Collection Management – aquire, catalog, preserve, maintain resources
* Enterprise Technology & Infrastructure – programming, systems, reporting, network
* LIS Administration – budget, planing, policy, assessment, strategy
* User Services – technology help and support, borrowing and lending, computing support, computing labs, media and event support

Institutions
* Middlebury
* MIIS
* Language Schools
* Schools Abroad
* Bread Loaf School of English
* Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference
* MMLA

Teams
* Area Directors
* Curricular Technology
* Digitization
* LIS Website