This Week in LIS - 23 May 2008

Submitted by bartch02 on May 23, 2008 - 3:51pm

Upcoming Dates

June 2 (Monday) Norse Apps Training Demo – 11:00 am
June 4 (Wednesday) LIS General Meeting – 9:00 am
June 9 (Monday) Office 2007 Training Demo – 11:00 am
June 11 (Wednesday) Office 2007 Training – All Day
June 13 (Friday) Internal LIS Annual Reports Due
June 16 (Monday) Norse Apps Training Demo – 11:00 am
June 18 (Wednesday) Norse Apps Training – morning
More information on upcoming training opportunities: http://lis.luther.edu/learn

Headline of the Week: Library and Information Studies Debuts

Over the last several months, the academic wing of LIS has been working to implement a number of changes regarding how courses taught by LIS faculty are treated and handled at the College, with the goal of standardizing the work done by our faculty with that of other faculty in different disciplines and departments. The end result of this work was a rechristening of the academic department within LIS as the Library and Information Studies department, and the inclusion in next year’s catalog of some specific language detailing the course taught by our faculty and other information about internships and other academic opportunities available to students.

Previously, the academic department lived under a variety of names depending on where you looked. Library, LIS, Library and Information Services were used in a variety of different places to refer to the academic unit of faculty. While the academic discipline of libraries and information work carries many names at different schools, we thought the name “Library and Information Studies” best fit our vision for Luther and our work. It reflects the academic nature of the work done by our faculty and is a very common discipline title nationally for graduate programs.

Faculty within LIS have been participating as teaching faculty in a number of areas over recent years. We have had several faculty teaching within the Paideia program and have been offering January-term classes as well. Previously, non-Paideia courses taught by LIS faculty were listed under generic headings in the course catalog (General Studies) and lacked any discipline-specific focus, even though the courses offered were squarely within the library and information studies discipline. By seeking these changes, we will now be able to offer courses in the future under a more appropriate and accurate descriptor. Similarly, students who wish to take internships for preparation for graduate study in library and information studies will now be able to do so under a more descriptive department name.

This change does not in any way represent plans to introduce a minor or major in library and information studies at Luther. LIS remains committed to integration of library and technology instruction within other disciplines and actively works to that end. This effort to rename the academic unit was born more out of fairness and equality to both students and faculty working in this area, so that the work they do is considered and labeled in the same way as all other academic work by faculty at Luther. This change also does not affect any organizational structures within the administrative unit of Library and Information Services. It does more accurately represent the work we do and plan to do in the future.

No TWILIS on May 30th

This Week in LIS will take a week off next week and resume on Friday, June 6th.

LIS Blog Highlights from the Week

The following articles are sampled from those available on the LIS Blog:

LIS Website Changes

Encore is now branded with an LIS logo. We continue to work on Research Pro.
The academic research portal is (mostly) functional at http://lis.luther.edu/research
Security changes on lis.luther.edu are still pending and will be complete shortly.

Notes from LIS Council

Council did not meet this week.

NITLE Opportunities

As a member of NITLE (National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education), Luther has the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of developmental and training programs intended for faculty, librarians, and information technologists. Events listed at the link below are currently open for registration by Luther participants. LIS Staff who are interested in participating in an event should speak with Christopher Barth. Faculty who are interested in participating should speak with Lori Stanley. Participation is contingent upon available funding and program acceptance.

Complete List of NITLE Opportunities

Notable Internet Resource of the Week: Rifflet.com

Granted not everyone is a composer, but this week’s site is an interesting idea generally on several levels, most notably for promotion of free and derivative use of intellectual material (in this case rifflets :). What is a rifflet you ask? From the website:

A rifflet is a piece of a song—a bass line, a guitar riff, a drum beat or something else entirely. Share your rifflets and combine them with others, or even upload a finished song.

Here’s the catch: every rifflet must be less than 60 seconds. The idea is to only upload a part of a song, or an idea for a song, or just a couple of guitar chords you think are cool. Then, you can download parts of other people songs (like a drumbeat) that you can combine with your ideas.

If you’re a dj, you can use all these great pieces of proto-songs for remixes without worrying about royalties or copyright restrictions, because these sounds are all on this site for the purpose of being remixed.

Billed as the home for unfinished songs, it is still a new site and certainly in a developing stage. Content is a little thin now, but is growing, and will no doubt grow as news of the site spreads. The idea to promote and reuse small sections of work is a refreshing change to the customary restrictions generally placed on media and music.

On the web at http://www.rifflet.com/