This Week in LIS - 24 April 2009

Headline of the Week: Reason Web Content Management: The First 100 Days

D5250CD6-A4F7-40DA-BFE9-837E09393DEF.jpgIn the coming week, it seems we’ll all be taking stock of the “first 100 days.” At Luther of course that refers to our deployment of our new web content management system Reason which began in mid-January. Work has progressed steadily since our selection and we now anticipate migrating to Reason for some portions of our site ahead of June target. Credit for the good work completed goes to our operational web deployment team which includes Scott Bassford, Kristin Bjerke, Marcia Gullickson, Brian Jones, Steve Smith, Greg Vanney. A few notable achievements in the project to date:

  • Members of Luther’s team have visited the Reason mothership at Carleton College on several occasions for introductory and specific training and guidance on Reason. The Carleton staff has been exceptionally welcoming and helpful as we come up to speed on the system. We are enjoying the opportunity to build a stronger relationship with this fellow-ACM school through this system deployment and look forward to contributing our own improvements to Carleton and the Reason community.
  • Work is nearly completion in migrating the Luther templates “look-and-feel” over into Reason. We are also working to actively migrate content, principally for content found on the home page or admissions site such as spotlights, news items, and recruiting content.
  • Our Communications & Marketing team is working with a consultant to develop a fresh look for our Admissions website that will debut this summer. The new site is being designed to be unique but harmonizing with other Luther-branded sites on the web.
  • We will be working to transition Luther’s online application process to focus on the Common App and taking care of the data integration needed for that transition with our primary information system Datatel.
  • A new Strategic Web Advisory Team has been named by President Torgerson and has met this semester to come up to speed on our current work and to begin to think about our strategic priorities moving forward on the web. This team is co-led by myself and Rob Larson, and includes Sherry Alcock, Mike Blair, Marcia Gullickson, Brad Miller, Scot Schaeffer, Joe Thompson, and Greg Vanney.

While we have much work yet to do, it seems the team is settling in and is growing more and more comfortable with Reason. We remain excited at the opportunities ahead of us with this new system as we continue to work to deploy Reason widely across the Luther website. Specific thanks to our operational team for everything done to date to bring this online.

LIS Staffing News

LIS has launched a recruitment for a Programmer/Analyst. We are currently conducting reference checks and planning for campus finalist interviews.

LIS Blog Highlights from the Week

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

Notes from LIS Council

Topics discussed by the LIS Council this week included:

  • Upcoming IAICU Summer Meeting
  • Planning for space in Main
  • New Fire Alarms for Preus Library
  • New Compressor for Preus Basement Air Conditioning
  • Upcoming Recommendations from our Service Points team
  • Recycling of Materials (library and technology)
  • Review of MISO Data

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.

A full list of events (sortable by registration deadline) is available at http://www.nitle.org/www/events.

Next Week in LIS

Notable Internet Resource of the Week: The Big Picture

Normally this section profiles a site that offers some new and at least marginally interesting application of web technology that advances the idea of web services. This week’s site “The Big Picture” doesn’t really offer any new application of web technology, but it does use the web to deliver a notable and often stunning view of the world around us. Published by boston.com, the site is a blog with entries published three times a week. The difference with this blog is that it publishes imagery focusing on current events, lesser-known stories, and interesting news. The site consistently proves that pictures are worth thousands of words, and the site frequently provides a vivid panorama of photographs of news you only read about in other venues. Recent topics covered on “The Big Picture” include, North Korea, Earth Day, Cassini, The Return of U.S. War Dead, Easter, Holy Week, L’Aquila Earthquake, Alaska’s Mount Redoubt, G20 Protests, Afghanistan, and Earth Hour.

On the web at http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/

Around the Web

Here are a few links to interesting developments over the past week:

Want to follow these updates during the week? or via RSS? Point your browser to Infoneer.net.

This Week in LIS is published most Fridays by Christopher Barth, Executive Director of Library and Information Services at Luther College for the Luther College community as well as those interested in information services and higher education.

Content is made available under Creative Commons license. Creative Commons License

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