This Week in LIS - 7 December 2007

Upcoming Dates

December 8: LIS Christmas Social (4-7pm)
December 12: Help Desk Technician Finalist Interview
December 18: LIS Christmas Event (2-5pm)

Main HVAC Work to Begin in LIS Work Areas

From Facilities: Our contractor has been working on ductwork at their shop. We will not see much activity from them until Thursday AM on campus. When classes are out and exams finished we will be working in the classrooms on 1st floor. There will be VAVs and ductwork mounted as well as some holes cut through the floor to ground floor. These opening will be located above the old mail room and above where Laurel Womeldorf works. The concentration for work will be in the classrooms over the Christmas Break. You will also notice soon that there will be some activity as we remove the old chiller. There will some electrical work that we will be doing outside as well.

Several folks met with Jay Uthoff in Thursday to discuss the specific impact of the work in our area. Work will begin December 14th, and will involve folks moving out of office spaces for short periods of time as they work through the space installing ductwork and working on the ceilings.

LIS to Learn More About Planned Decorah Fiber-Optic Network

This past summer, various representatives of the City of Decorah, Decorah School District, Winneshiek County, and Winneshiek Medical Center have discussed and planned for installation of a high-speed fiber-optic network between these entities. They are also interested in speaking with others who have significant networking and bandwidth needs in Decorah, including Luther. We'll meet with them later in December to learn a little bit more about their project and what impact it may have on Luther and our considerations for network connections and bandwidth. More on this initiative: http://tinyurl.com/3clcjz

Google Apps Feedback / Your Creativity Needed

We are currently soliciting and receiving feedback from all our Google Apps beta users. Reaction is strongly positive across the board. It is our hope to package our evaluation work, feedback and other documentation into an official project proposal soon. As part of that proposal, we're seeking a name for this new suite of services. We'd rather not call it Google Apps, but would like something else that brands and localizes this product. Ideally a naming scheme that both encompasses the whole suite, but also each part (mail, calendar, docs, chat, start, etc.) would be good. So, if you have thoughts or ideas, please send them along.

Dear Linka

A reminder of our Dear Linka project to better interact with our users via humorous Q&As. The project document is available in the LIS General project in Basecamp. Submissions should be emailed to me by Monday, December 17th. Thanks for your help in making this a fun and engaging project.

Holiday Gathering - Saturday, December 8

Rebecca and I welcome LIS folk and their families to our home (2412 Tamarack Drive) from 4-7pm this Saturday, December 8 to celebrate the holidays and a successful 2007. Hearty hor'dourves will be provided. All are welcome to come, even if you haven't RSVPed.

We won't let the weather slow us down, though many of you know we live at the top of a rather challenging hill :) Generally, the hill is well-maintained. In the event of snow, for those with four-wheel drive, there's no trouble getting up and down the Tamarack Drive hill. For others (like myself), there is a second entrance to the subdivision at the driveway for the building where Ozzie's Outdoors used to be. It is a plowed gravel road that tracks around the airport to Shagbark Lane. Once you're on Shagbark, that road will dead-end into our home at the intersection with Tamarack Drive. That route is not as hilly and only involves a small grade down on Shagbark. Call (382-6458) if you have questions.

Chris Out - Monday & Tuesday

I'll be attending the Fall Task Force meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) in Washington DC on Monday and Tuesday. This is a group under the overall auspices of Educause and the Association of Research Libraries and offers a great intertwingling of library and information technology leaders at higher education institutions from across the United States and around the world. Plenary sessions will be given by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (founder of the WWW) who will present the 2007 Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration, and Timo Hannay, Publishing Director of the Nature Group and nature.com who will discuss scholarly communication and efforts to reshape it in a digital world.

Notes from LIS Council

Topics covered by LIS Council this week that are not otherwise mentioned in this week's TWILIS included:

Ongoing network connectivity issues with G4 Macs in various places on campus. We continue to work toward permanent resolution of this issue.
Initial planning for the 2008 faculty computer replacement. We'll be talking much more about this in the near future.
Jean G. and Steve S. are participating in MS SQL trainin.
Luther's e-Christmas Card is going out this week to employees and then students.
Review and Assessment of LIS items in Luther's forthcoming strategic plan including identification of priorities on individual items, potential funding sources, and who will be responsible.

GusDay

GusDay is an annual meeting of technology staff for Minnesota schools (which Luther perennially crashes :) This year's event is Wednesday, February 6th at Gustavus Adoiphus. The event website is online at http://gustavus.edu/events/gusday/ If you're interested in attending, let myself or Diane Gossman know and we can coordinate the Luther contingent.

Reminders

LIS staff are encouraged to trial Google Apps for Education. Contact Adam for information on how to participate.
Puffer Plan lunches - schedule available in Basecamp or on lis.luther.edu
Have news to share? Post to the blog at lis.luther.edu/blog
Tuesday items to share? Please send along to Cindy H.
Traveled lately? Please post a brief report to the blog at lis.luther.edu

Recruitment Updates

Systems Administrator - Campus Interviews are complete.
Academic Technology Librarian - Semifinalist review is underway.
Help Desk Technician - Campus Interviews are underway.

8:45s for Next Week

We'll hold virtual meetings everyday next week. Monday's meeting will be led by Application Development and Tuesday's meeting will be led by Network & Systems.

Cool Resource of the Week: Zotero

On the recommendation of an LISer, here's a brief plug for Zotero, a Firefox plugin for bibliographic citation management. Specific features include automatic capture of citation information from web pages, notetaking, storage of PDFs, web pages, text, images and links, integration with Word, formatted citation export, and online blogging platforms like WordPress. It is produced by the Center for History and New Media and George Mason University with support from the Institute for Museum and Library Services and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The price is right when compared with other citation management software ...

On the web: http://www.zotero.org/