This Week in LIS - 2 September 2011

Headline of the Week: LIS Technology Help Desk Stats

Students began returning to campus on August 15th (sports teams, RAs, etc). In past years, ResLife has estimated that as many as 1,000 students are on campus before the official move-in weekend. Services have to be provided to these students (dining, custodial, etc) and nearly every one of them has a computer, mobile device, or other system that needs to get onto Luther’s network. This, of course, means they come to the Technology Help Desk.

During these first few weeks, one of the most important metrics the Technology Help Desk uses to measure the amount of support we are providing is our 1st Call Resolutions. These are contacts where an issue is solved immediately without the need for a Work Order.

The graphs below lists the 1st Call Resolution Counts beginning on Aug 15 and ending to Aug 31 (first day of classes). These numbers do not include students assisted in the dorms during Move-In Weekend (Aug 27 & 28) and while fairly accurate, they are not 100%. Circumstances often prevented Help Desk staff from recording every contact (busy, computers in use, etc).

It’s also worth mentioning that from Aug 15 until Aug 26, the Technology Help Desk was staffed by only 2 full time student workers – Charles Banta and Ruiyi Li. Additional part-time assistance came from Madesh Chennappa, Adam Lapp, and Pramod Nikalje when we could borrow them from their other duties in Workstation Support or Training (typically 2 – 3 days/week). Help Desk Managers assisted when possible but were in training from the 22nd to 27th.

We’d also like to thank the Research Librarians for allowing us to take over their portion of our joined desk. At our peak, we were working on 18 computers at one time spread across the desks with 3 – 4 staff multitasking.

(The Technology Help Desk was not open on August 20 or 21)

LIS Blog Highlights from the Week

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

• Customer Relationship Management software demonstrations [Luther only]
• Liaison Responsibilities during John Goodin’s Sabbatical [Luther only]
• Library Meeting August 30, 2011
• Using Gmail, Calendar and Docs without an internet connection
• How I use Google Docs as a student
• Technology Help Desk Stats – August 15th to August 31st
• User Services Meeting – 8/30/11
• Wireless Printers
• Understanding What Morsle Can Do For You Demonstrations to be Held
• New blog entry at Journeys to America
• 2011/2012 Network Registration Stats as of 9/1/11
• Now Hiring! – Project Assistant for the Postville Project
• A Dang Cool Interactive Graphic of Evolution of the Web

Notes from LIS Council

LIS Council is the leadership team within LIS. Among the topics discussed this past week were:

• New Items
  • ACM
    • Representatives from the ACM are on campus today and tomorrow meeting with various groups including LIS Council.
  • September LIS General
    • Reviewed topics to be shared at the September LIS General.
  • Policy on Accounts for Faculty/Staff Spouses
    • Discussed the policy at http://lis.luther.edu/about/policies/networkuse/access and will continue to handle requests on a case-by-case basis.
  • Luther Windmill
    • Adam has been contacted in regard to the Luther windmill and will continue to be the contact for networking related to the project.
  • State of Wireless
    • Xirrus was here last Wednesday to assess wireless on campus. Based on the assessment, no more equipment will be ordered since it’s working well in Miller, Dieseth, and Olson where Xirrus equipment is installed.
  • State of Internet Upgrade
    • We have more of our bandwidth now and are currently at 185 Mbps which is up from 140 Mbps last semester. Before the fall is over, this will increase to 240 Mbps.
  • Library Meetings
    • Those involved with Library Services will meet once a month. A subset of that group will continue to meet weekly with a focus on instruction / training.
  • Research Help Desk Hours
    • A new schedule for the evening Research Help hours has been determined based on traffic at that service point. For the fall semester, LIS will staff the desk from 7:00pm to 9:30pm. Sunday hours remain the same, research help is also offered at various locations on campus during the week, and appointments can be made with your departmental liaison.
  • LIS Directory
    • The in-house [paper] phone directory used internally within LIS will be updated and shared with members of LIS.
  • LIS Student Worker Schedules
    • Access to the Technology Help Desk student work schedules will be provided to those working at the Research Help Desk.
  • Virtual Access Point Services Software
    • The 8 public access workstations in the library now have the IowaWORKS Virtual Desktop software application installed.
• Returning Items
  • LIS Service and System Notices – Fall 2011
    • We plan to finalize content by next week Thursday in preparation of sending the notice the following week.
  • Basecamp
    • Discussed alternative locations for the LIS Emergency Response plan which is currently stored in Basecamp as well as alternatives to CampFire which is a product from the same vendor and also part of the LIS Emergency Response plan.

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 Diane Gossman. 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/events/calendar.php

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.

Food for Thought

So far this school year more than 1900 devices have been registered for use on the Luther College Network. Most of these are student owned devices, but some may also be personal devices owned by Faculty or Staff. Here is a graph showing the distribution of the Operating Systems that these devices run.

Thanks to Adam Forsyth for this week’s submission.

This Week in LIS is published most Fridays by Diane Gossman, Chair of the LIS Council, on behalf of the LIS Council at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. The Library and Information Services Council provides strategic leadership for information support to Luther College and its mission.

Content is made available under Creative Commons license.