Public

We’ll very soon have local training for our RFID system that will track master keys on campus. Installation has been progressing and we will soon have a fully-functional system in place. We are working with Security and Facilities on this implementation.

The Open Library is an initiative of the Internet Archive seeking to provide an alternative way of representing books online. According to their website, their vision is to create free web access to a variety of important book collections around the world. Their home page is made up of book covers, and books are presented in a very book-like fashion (for the Internet at least). Books are keyword searchable and are linked to audio versions where available.

I've just added a link in the library catalog record for College Chips to the digital edition of Chips that Rachel demoed for us yesterday. Let me know if there's a problem with the catalog entry but let Rachel know if there's a problem with Chips itself.

Present: Andrew, Matt, Colin, Jim, Ryan, Bob E, Bob P, Larry, Todd, Diane

Many may know that I keep on top of the world around us through RSS feeds and aggregated news content from many sources all over the web. As a result, I try to pay attention to alternative ways of using RSS … which brings about this week’s site: Voyage (on the web at http://www.rssvoyage.com/ It provides an interesting graphical display to RSS news data presenting individual items on a three-dimensional timeline that you can scroll through using your mouse or keyboard.

Thanks to those who have provided comment on our “Puffer plan.” I think we will move forward with this beginning in September. Stay tuned for more information … and your continued comments are welcome.

We’ll hold virtual meetings Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday next week. There will be no 8:45 meeting on Wednesday — we will meet at 9:00 that morning in Mott for our September LIS General meeting.

Included in our plan to create our User Services team this summer was the transfer of Cindy Hansmeier and Laurel Womeldorf out of Training & Support. The outstanding question of course is, where did they go?

As you’ve heard, we are examining more closely Google Apps for Education in consideration for using them as a vendor for email and calendaring services. Adam and I have been happily using Gmail for more than a month now and we’re interested in adding some additional volunteers to the trial run. So what does this mean?

A number of small adjustments have been made to the network and network services at the start of school. We’re working to troubleshoot sporadic Internet connectivity issues, and as a result are running on just one of our Internet pipes (this summer we had expanded to two). We’re examining options to add the second back in and to ensure that connectivity is reliable and secure.