This Week in LIS - 25 January 2008

Upcoming Dates

  • January 29 (Tuesday): LIS Midwinter Planning
  • January 31 (Thursday): Opening Convocation – Spring Semester
  • February 6 (Wednesday): GusDay at Gustavus Adolphus
  • February 7 (Thursday): Academic Technology Librarian Candidate Visit

LIS Winter Planning Day – Tuesday, January 29th

This Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. we’ll gather in Mott for our annual Winter Planning Day. Here’s a brief overview of the agenda and what to expect:

  1. We will first have general announcements and personnel announcements. Our first session will then primarily focus on a review of our 2007-08 Objectives as published in our annual report. This list of “to-do” items are the things we decided last summer we would be focusing energies on this year. We will review each one briefly to see what our progress is. We will also go over the list of things that weren’t on this list, but should have been, with updates on those items as well.
  2. After a short break, we will have a break-out session to review some national and local MISO data relating to the importance our constituents assign to our services. We will brainstorm our interpretations of the data and begin conversations that will inform our Summer Planning Day where we will set objectives for 2008-09.
  3. Following lunch (provided), we will have a second break-out session looking at training data from MISO as we continue to plan and work toward implementation of a training initiative that will involve all parts of LIS.
  4. Finally, after a break we will come together as a full group to review a communication plan for LIS that has evolved out of the communication studies from last semester. This new plan will give everyone guidance on what tools to use when to encourage efficient and effective communication within LIS.

We should complete the day by approximately 3:30 p.m. All sessions will be held in the Union.

LIS Website Changes

For users of the LIS website, several items are new this week:

  • The WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE has been turned off by default. This is due to uneven and irregular results when using it. Generally, it is good not to use it if it is not necessary. The editor is still installed, and it can be enabled by default by an individual user under their account settings. It can also be enabled on any given page/node. Please keep reading for a new alternative to the editor …
  • Textile is installed and is a preferred tool for entering text. What is Textile you ask? Textile is simple text markup that translates formatted into XHTML-compliant code. If you’ve used a Writeboard in Basecamp, you’ve used Textile and everything you use in Basecamp will now work in Drupal (this newsletter has now been converted to Textile). Give it a try … it should provide more consistent results than TinyMCE.
  • New Content on the site has Textile as the default input type. If you require HTML, you can change your input type to Filtered HTML, and enable the WYSIWYG editor.
  • Notifications are now enabled for all authenticated users, allowing you to be notified by email of any changes that occur sitewide, including on the LIS Blog.

Spring Semester Convocation

I encourage everyone to attend the opening convocation next Thursday at 9:40 a.m. in the CFL. Speaker Clifford Lull will focus on the role of citizenship, ethical behavior, and civil discourse in American undergraduate education.

Notes from LIS Council

Topics discussed by council this week were:

  • Planning and Review for Tuesday Winter Planning Day

NITLE Opportunities

As a member of NITLE, Luther has the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of programs targeted for faculty, librarians, and information technologists. Each week, we’ll list upcoming opportunities. If you’re interested in more information about any of these events see the links below. If you would like to be nominated to participate in an event, please let me know prior to the posted deadline. Participation is contingent upon available funding and program acceptance. Items added since the last issue of TWILIS carry a NEW: tag.

Recruitment Updates

  • Academic Technology Librarian – Finalist interviews are underway.

8:45s for Next Week

We’ll hold virtual meetings Monday, Wednesday and Thursday next week.

Cool Resource of the Week: Library Arcade

Carnegie Mellon Libraries have two “arcade” games inspired by libraries (originally spotted by Rene a while back). The first game has you assisting patrons with their research requests. They’ll let you know what they want, and it is up to you to find what they need. The second game tests your ability to shelve books according to the Library of Congress classification system. The games are targeted for students to help them gain research and library skills. You can play them on the web at: http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/etc/

Around the Web

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

This Week in LIS is available on the web each week at: http://lis.luther.edu/twilis

Related Categories: