This Week in LIS - 4 September 2009

Headline of the Week: A New Academic Year

This past week, Luther welcomed not only the Class of 2013 to campus, but also welcomed back our returning students as well as our faculty from our collective summer adventures. For the first time, LIS now has available documentation designed to inform new (and returning) community members about the services LIS provides to enhance their work and study at Luther. These guides (one for students and one for employees) are available on the LIS website at http://lis.luther.edu/welcome. We will be announcing these guides along with a number of news notes of changes in LIS services for the fall to the campus community in the coming week via email.

Among the notable news from LIS this fall:

• We have reconfigured our primary service points in Preus Library. The Technology Help Desk has relocated adjacent to our Reference area. Walk up Help Desk assistance is now available from the combined Technology Help / Research Help desk. A new call center serves as the dispatch and remote assistance hub. In the coming weeks, Luther’s Writing Center will join the Technology Help Desk and Reference Desk on the main floor, providing a more integrated and collaborative support center for students.

• Student printing is now monitored through GoPrint in an effort to promote Luther’s sustainability goals and to reduce waste and costs. GoPrint deployment will continue in other areas across Luther during the 2009-10 academic year.

• Equipment that previously circulated from the Technology Help Desk including laptops, projectors, screens, etc. are now available from the Library Circulation Desk. Reservations for this equipment can still be done through the Help Desk.

• LIS continues to expand our online training materials. Visit http://lis.luther.edu/learn for links to a wide variety of tutorials, documentation, and information on training opportunities provided by LIS.

• Expanded wireless connectivity is now available in Baker Village, Ylvisaker, and Norby House.

• Real time availability information about Luther’s computer labs is available at our new LabStats website (http://labstats.luther.edu:8080/).

• The LIS Technology Help Desk site has moved and been integrated into the broader LIS website. Check it out at http://lis.luther.edu/helpdesk.

• You can now check activity on your Norse Card at http://norsecard.luther.edu/. All transactions are now available, and paper statements are no longer being printed.

• Forget your Norse Key? You can reset it via the web provided you have set security questions for identity verification. To use this new feature, visit http://norsekey.luther.edu/.

• As employees of an educational institution, faculty and staff at Luther College enjoy a number of technology-related benefits. More information on these is available at http://lis.luther.edu/services/employeebenefits.

• Luther’s Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a tool that allows use to access a network share (such as a T drive or your H drive) through an Internet browser. Instead of seeing just your “public_html” folder, you can see and access all of your files. Simply go to https://vpn.luther.edu and log in using your NorseKey.

• Keep up to date with the latest from LIS News from the LIS Blog (http://lis.luther.edu/blog) and our weekly email newsletter This Week in LIS (http://lis.luther.edu/twilis).

We wish everyone a productive 2009-10. Welcome back!

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LIS Blog Highlights from the Week

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

• I Love To Tell the Story – ELCA Churchwide Assembly special project
• H1N1 PSA Videos
• Technology Benefits for Employees
• Need to Reset Your Passwords?
• User Services Meeting – 9/1/09
• New NorseKey and NorseApps workflow for applicants [Luther Only]
• Luther College’s local access cable TV channel has moved.
• NITLE Update – 1 September 2009

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Notes from LIS Council

LIS Council met August 18th and discussed the following topics:

• Norby House preparations
• Workflow changes in how Norse Keys are assigned in the admission process
• Student employees at the co-located Technology Help and Research Help desk
• New signage for the main floor of the library
• A new general purpose brochure for LIS
• Information for Luther tour guides
• Budgeting for service point renovation
• Soundproofing for the new construction areas
• Agenda planning for LIS General
• Pandemic planning

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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.

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Upcoming LIS Training, Instruction, and Professional Development Opportunities

Click on the event below for specific information and for a link to register. More information on training and development events is available.

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Notable Internet Resource of the Week: FontCapture

Time Magazine recently profiled The Death of Handwriting focusing on the changes in how we communicate (through keyboards instead of pen and paper). Online services such as Fontcapture carry forward handwriting into the digital age for those looking to add a personal touch to their keyboarding. The site provides a template that can be downloaded for an individual to write out individual letters and symbols. After scanning it and submitting it back to the website, a font is created that can be installed on your computer, allowing you to type in your own handwriting. The service is available for free.

Of course a service like this assumes that your handwriting is somewhat legible to start with … perhaps an assumption that is better not to be made :)

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

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Around the Web

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

• Books, Media, and Publishing
  • What future for media and journalism? [BBC News]
  • Publishers Must Change the Way Authors Get Paid [Publishing Perspectives]
  • Considering ‘Reading Management’ Software [New York Times]
  • Newspapers are in the Newspaper Business [Bottom Up]
  • The Cost of Journals — and Their Future [Inside Higher Ed]
  • Four reasons neighborhood papers might be the (or a) future of editing [Nieman Journalism Lab]
  • Big Amazon will give you back your copies of 1984, annotations won’t be sent into the chute [TechCrunch]
  • Book Clubs and the Future of Publishing [GOOD]

• Copyright and Intellectual Property
  • Media Cos.’ Best Customers: P2P Users [Advertising Age]
  • When Pirates Become Copyright Cash Cows [TorrentFreak]
  • Is Creative Commons Good for Copyright? [Copycense]
  • RIAA Says Student Continues to Encourage Illegal Downloading [Chronicle of Higher Education]

• Culture, Economy, and Business
  • The Future of Reading – ‘Reading Workshop’ Approach Lets Students Pick the Books [New York Times]
  • Avalanche of store closings coming, study says [Chicago Sun-Times]
  • Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text [Wired]
  • Diplomacy in the Age of No Secrets [Wall Street Journal]
  • The Incredible Information Valuation! [Center for Internet and Society]
  • Only 13% of Wikipedia Contributors Are Women, Study Says [Wall Street Journal]
  • EBay Is Said to Have a Deal to Sell Skype [New York Times]
  • Why do we freak out every time Gmail goes down? [Slate]
  • 50 things that are being killed by the internet [Telegraph]

• Data Security and Privacy
  • Digital Divide: Is It War Between Information Managers And Users? [SciTechBits]
  • Gotcha! Why Online Anonymity May Be Fading [NPR]

• Future
  • The Information Overload Era: TV by 2015 [Intel]

• Google and Search
  • Sony Sides With Google in ‘Library of Future’ Settlement [Wired]
  • Waving hello to Google Apps [Google Enterprise Blog]
  • Amazon: Google Books deal an ‘unprecedented’ copyright hack [cnet News]
  • Google’s Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars [Chronicle of Higher Education]
  • The Authors Guild – Amazon Accuses Someone Else of Monopolizing Bookselling [The Author’s Guild]
  • Google, “The Last Library,” and Millions of Metadata Mistakes [Library Journal]

• Google Apps
  • Folder Sharing in Google Docs [Google Operating System]

• Hardware and Technology Tools
  • OLEDs Could Be as Cheap as Newspaper to Produce [Fast Company]
  • Kindle claims 45% of eReader market, Sony claims 30% [Best Tablet Review]
  • Color e-paper due next year but will the price be right? [gadgetell]
  • Restoration starts on one of oldest computers [cnet News]

• Higher Education
  • S.F. City College plan to sell classes OKd [SFGate.com]
  • Education Needs to Be Turned on Its Head [Zen Habits]
  • Professors Embrace Online Courses Despite Qualms About Quality [Chronicle of Higher Education]
  • Blow to National Merit Scholarships [Inside Higher Ed]
  • In a recession, is college worth it? Fear of debt changes plans [USA Today]
  • BU dorm offers a study in luxury [Boston Globe]
  • The Urgent Need for Education Reform [BusinessWeek]
  • A Call for Change, From Within [Inside Higher Ed]

• Innovation and Design
  • When Design Gets in the Way [Design Observer]

• Internet and Networking
  • As Internet turns 40, barriers threaten its growth [Newsvine]
  • $32M Louis Vuitton judgment shows limits of ISP safe harbors [ars technica]
  • Securing the .edu top-level domain with DNSSEC [ars technica]

• Libraries and Librarians
  • The Library of the Commons: Rise of the Infodex [O’Reilly Radar]
  • Data Deluge Swamps Science Historians [Wall Street Journal]
  • The future of libraries, with or without books [CNN]

• Mobility
  • iPhone Users Love the Device, but Hate Its Slowness [New York Times]

• Social Media & Communication
  • Is Social Networking Changing Childhood? [Common Sense Media]
  • Tweet delete: NFL bans social media in games [ESPN]
  • Surgery tweets: New way to keep family in loop [MSNBC]
  • Higher Insurance Premiums for Social-Network Users? [WebNewser]
  • Pretweeting: Twitter Gets a Prediction Market [Mashable]
  • Parents Misjudge Social Network Habit [New York Times]
  • Why Twitter Scares The NFL [Forbes]

• Software, Operating Systems, and The Cloud
  • VMware May Be Microsoft’s Top Rival After Google [New York Times]

The links above are selected from material posted to Infoneer.net, which gathers links and comment on the worlds of libraries, technology, higher education, culture, intellectual property, copyright, information, ethics, design, professional identity, leadership, and the future. Subscribe to Infoneer.net RSS

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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.