TWILIS

Headline of the Week: Building a Building Plan

This year, one of our objectives has been to ask and answer both short-term and long-term questions about the role of a library on a residential liberal arts campus. We know the library is a central and strategic academic resource the enables Luther to deliver a quality liberal arts education. We are also keenly aware of changes in how we use and relate to the information we need to learn.

Headline of the Week: Working Smarter and Moving Forward

Perhaps one of the most difficult things that we as a society have to grapple with these days is the rate of change going on around us. Just about everything we do seems to be up for reevaluation and reconsideration as previously-held assumptions no longer hold true.

Headline of the Week: Romanticizing the Struggle

One of the more thought-provoking speakers at the recent Association of College and Research Libraries conference in Philadelphia was Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and musician who spoke on the topic The Bipolar Library: How Humanizing and Digitizing Must Both be Advanced.

Headline of the Week: ACM Report

This week, library and technology leaders from ACM schools met at the ACM offices in Chicago to discuss current goings-on and to get a picture of upcoming ACM initiatives.

Headlines of the Week: IPAL Update

On February 28th, I had the opportunity to meet with other academic library directors from the State of Iowa in Des Moines at Drake Univerity to discuss the current and future benefits of the IPAL (Iowa Private Academic Libraries) consortium. Formed in 1977, the group has had an evolving mission over the years, and most recently primarily serves as a venue for professional development and discussion for staff from academic libraries in Iowa as well as a purchasing consortium for library resources.

Headlines of the Week: Ideas and Ideals

LIS Ideas Site Expanded

Regular readers are familiar with the Ideas website made available by LIS to gather and discuss ideas for services. We see this as a valuable tool for the community to help shape the nature and direction of services, and are very thankful for the input offered there. For several years now, LIS has maintained a separate internal directory of projects either in planning or in implementation that we have used to track progress and share internally.

Headline of the Week: Always Something New Going On

At the beginning of each term we prepare a brief overview of new and changed services for the community. Many, if not all of these topics are covered in our blog and here in TWILIS, but we have heard from the community that there is value to a consolidated list.

Headline of the Week: Ideas 2.0

For the last year, LIS has encouraged use of an online idea forum to gather and discuss ideas on what we should start doing, stop doing, or do better. Anyone in the community has been welcome to participate by adding their votes and comments. As LIS has considered collaborative opportunities this year, we have also added items that we could do with someone else.

Headline of the Week: IKON Survey Response

Last summer, our vendor providing document and mail center services conducted a quality of service survey at Luther gauging opinions of the document center, our online document submissions system Trac, the mail center, and support of local copiers and printers. IKON and Luther have for the past several months reviewed the results of this survey to make adjustments and are now publishing a summary review of the original survey results and responses to individual questions and comments raised in the survey.

Headline of the Week: CNI Trip Report

Last month I had the opportunity to attend the fall task force meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information in Arlington, Virginia. The meeting provides very informative and timely updates on significant initiatives in higher education information support across libraries and technology. Though travel challenges clipped off the ends of this meeting for me, the sessions I attended were interesting and useful.