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Posts tagged ‘LIS’

Mar 31

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How to Print From Your Laptop. Anywhere.

Last Friday over breakfast, I printed my response paper from my laptop in Proctor, and then picked it up in the Monroe computer lab on my way to class upstairs. The assignment was quite literally “hot off the press” when I gave it to my teacher.

Printing from your laptop to any public printer on campus is as easy as logging onto go/papercut.

You can also use “webprinting” if you need to print something from a walk-up computer.

Webprinting is so easy it’s almost certainly self-explanatory. So, of course I have prepared a step-by-step guide with pictures just to prove how self-explanatory it is/would have been!

How to Print over the internet

Log onto go/papercut:

1) Enter your username and password.
2) Choose [Web print] from the left-hand column
3) Choose [Submit a Job] on the right-hand side of the screen

3) Select a printer. Choose [Print Options and Account Selection] on the bottom-right.
4) Click [Upload Document] on the bottom-right.
5) Click [Browse..]. Choose your document. Click [Upload & Complete] on the bottom-right.

It is now as if you have printed your document from a computer in a computer lab. Your document is now ready to be released from a print release station.

Nov 17

Library Book Sale

From the LIS Blog:

Tuesday, November 17th – Sunday, November 22nd, Main Library

Open at 9:00 AM on first day, continuing during regular library open hours thereafter.

LIBRARY BOOK SALE–  The Middlebury College Main Library will offer withdrawn and duplicate copies of books, VHS tapes, and other media for sale at great prices. Choose from a wide variety of items for scholarly work or recreational reading and viewing.  All proceeds from the sale will be added to the library’s materials replacement fund. (Because the low price asked for materials is in part a service to the college community, anyone purchasing items on the first day of the sale will be required to show a Middlebury College ID.)

Oct 13

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Is the Googleverse is coming to Midd?

I ask that question, not wondering whether or not there’s a looming invasion of Middlebury by an army of the computer geeks who work at Google HQ’s in Mountain View, Calif. Rather, it’s in the hope that our clunky ol’ WebMail service might be facing its last semesters online. According to monstersandcritics.com, a long list of universities and corporations (GE, and Proctor and Gamble, for instance) already utilize Google’s email service for student and employee accounts, representing just a part of the spectrum of what Google, Inc. has to offer to corporations, colleges, and individuals. Is “going Google” really in Midd’s near future?

LIS says, “Highly likely.” Mike Roy, Dean of Library and Information Services, says that this year, LIS is already taking a look at what Google Apps for Higher Education has to offer. While he says that Middlebury’s implementation of the Gmail/Google-based email server is “highly likely” for students, and possibly for faculty and staff, too, the earliest launch date we can hope for is September 1, 2010.

But, with the launch of the new and improved Middlebury.edu design just on the horizon, it looks like that will have to whet our appetites for awesome-new-stuff-on-the-web until the start of the next academic year. Or is it?

You can make the switch yourself. Admittedly I write this an unabashed Mac user, slightly offended by the general unfriendliness of our current Microsoft-based WebMail towards my Safari or Firefox browser. Regardless, and since the earliest launch date of any new college-wide email service is still far off, it’s still a valid question for anyone to ask him or herself, “Am I getting all I can out of my email service?” Since most of us spend significant time arranging the business of life sorting through our inboxes, if you answered, “No,” maybe its a time for a personal switch.

Google, Gmail, and beyond! You can take a look at what Google has to say about their Apps for Education and at the list  of Google products below, but as a satisfied “Googler” myself, given the ease-of-use, innovativeness, and cost-effectiveness of Google products in general, I highly recommend investing in the time to becoming part of the Googleverse–for individuals and the College alike. Here’s a sampling of the ingeniousness of our friends over at Google, Inc. . . .

The basics

  • Gmail: For those of you who haven’t got the free account yet, get this. You’ll never have to delete email with the free GB, your @midd.edu email can be easily forwarded, and the options and features for inbox organization are endless, while never overwhelming. If you’re a hardcore-language-pledger abroad, they’ll even translate your messages into 36 different languages–automatically. Do it! Get an account at gmail.com.
  • Google Docs: Create, save, and back up your papers online, accessible from any Internet connection. So great! Start now at documents.google.com.
  • Google Reader: As much fun as it is to go to the pretty NYTimes.com, WSJ, or Huffington Post homepages and read the headlines of the day, this Google tool is a great way to make your time browsing online way more effective. Simply add the RSS feeds you like to keep up on (like MiddBlog, the Daily Beast, New Yorker, ESPN Headlines, to get you started), and see everything laid out in a nice, easy-to-read, no-frills list arranged almost like an email inbox. Genius! Learn more at reader.google.com.

The next generation of Google

  • Google Blog and Gmail Blog: Interesting and helpful updates and articles on the newest product releases, features, and Google culture. Three thumbs up! Read at blog.google.com and gmailblog.blogspot.com.
  • Google Squared: The concept lives up to its name: organize your search results into a row-and-column table. Great for quick price comparison while shopping, for finding quick stats on anything from demographics, to lists of world leaders, to restaurants in a given area, and more. Wow! Learn more here, or get started at google.com/squared.
  • Google Latitude: Whether you’re making your Vermont rounds, traveling for vacation, or taking an excursion while abroad, and you want to let your peeps know exactly where you are, you can. Provided that you have a WiFi connection or internet service on your cell, you can use this neat little app to help your friends (or parents) let you know where your legs are taking you. How bout that! Take a look at google.com/latitude.
  • Google Wave: Although the release date is TBA, and as a matter of fact, is probably still a bit into the moderately far future, Google is promising a completely revolutionary browser that will put any conception of web browsing, e-communication, social networking, user-based content, etc. into a simple, fast, and all-encompassing Internet experience. Exciting! Check it at wave.google.com.

Apr 25

GOtionary is Back!

@middblog‘s twitter followers know this already, but the GOtionary is back and better yet, they now allow self-service shortcut creation. What does this mean for you? If your planning an event with special instructions on a page, you can create a Middlebury GO shortcut yourself. On campus, that allows anyone to type in go/yourevent or from off-campus, it is http://go.middlebury.edu/yourevent.

MiddBlog has a shortcut: go/middblog

Mar 30

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The Price of Printing: Who Will Pay?

Dean of LIS Mike Roy launched his new blog with a somewhat uninspiring title: Another Dean’s View. That said, Mike’s first post is an important topic for Middkids next year: paying for printing. That’s right, MiddBlog heard rumors of this in the form of price quotas but now it seems the future of pricing printing is up for grabs. Mike poses a series of questions:

Should we institute a quota? Some schools provide students with a quota, and only charge them for their printing after they exceeed their quota. Some economists argue that this is a bad idea, as it creates a new, albeit less severe, moral hazard. If there is a quota, should it be the same for all students, or should it vary based on the amount of writing or e-reserves assigned in the course? or on financial need?

In our current economic climate where we are having to cut budgets, what is the objective in introducing a charging scheme? Should our pricing be so low that printing costs are still subsidized, but just less so than our present system of not charging at all? Should we try to recover all the costs associated with printing? Should we be so bold as to try to change our printing system from a money-loser to a revenue source, allowing us to (for example) increase the amount of internet bandwidth or wireless in the dorms?

How do faculty connect to this? In the same way that responsible faculty factor in the cost to the student when choosing texts for a class, should faculty begin to factor in the printing cost when assigning reserve readings and writing assignments?

Mike will encounter most resistance from students on e-reserves. Some students feel they don’t have a choice but to print their readings. Most cannot read their e-res on the screen. Annotations on screen are also a point of contention. I do not see faculty reducing the amount of e-res assigned mostly because faculty have already been pushed from assigning books to be bought in the bookstore to e-reserves. It will be hard to attach a cost or “credit” to the amount of E-res assigned mostly because it would have to be done on a rolling basis because faculty add e-res as the semester goes on. Also, not all prof. use the official e-res site and instead put papers in the classes folder for reading. Either way, I do think that the cost has to be made clear to professors and students at the beginning of the semester when students sign up for classes. It also might be worth investigating a “cap-and-trade” type scheme where professors get to give “e-res printing credit” to students and then must reduce the total-school-wide amount each semester. It also might be cool to tap an economics class to do this as a project… people in the community have respect when students research and propose a solution.

I see many students’ bringing their own printers to school, using the College’s reams of paper, and squabbling over whether roommates can “borrow” their printer. The Bookstore will want to start stocking ink cartridges. The professors that are willing to receive work via email will become instant hits. The professors who require you to have your e-res printed for referencing in class will be despised.

Either way, I think it would be necessary to not charge anybody for a semester or year but show them how much their printing costs.  Then, introduce subsidized pricing and then gradually raise the price of printing to cover costs fully. Springing this on students will not end well. It’d be interesting to see if student turn to e-book readers like the Kindle (which is launching an education edition soon).

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