Hi, introducing myself. Sorry to miss the first day — it sounded like a great place for an extended look at our seminar project!
I oversee the instruction program at Brandeis, working in a merged organization, which means that librarians and instructional technologists work in a totally blended way to support teaching and learning across the disciplines. We aim for an approach to instruction that integrates information literacy skills with media literacies and technical fluency.
I got my library degree from University of Pittsburgh ages ago (1998!), was a government documents librarian for many years and head of a docs/data/GIS unit for awhile. Before getting my library degree, I worked at the Seattle Public Library for a long time doing telephone reference.
I also have a background in political organizing and labor movement, and this part of my brain refocussed on access to information from every conceivable angle when I became a librarian (Code, network neutrality, free culture, new media literacies and Henry Jenkins, government secrecy and access to govt info, privacy, copyright and business models for both cultural and scholarly information). I’m glad to be a part of the seminar!
October 23, Stork
The Mixing and Blurring of Entertainment and Scholarship
- Karrie Peterson, Brandeis
- Joy Pile, Midd
- Alex Chapin, Midd
- Chrissa Godbout, Mt. H.
November 6, Eagle
Do Students Learn Differently?
- Thom Valicenti, Brandeis
- Bryan Carson, Midd
- Mary Glackin, Mt. H.
November 20, Elephant
Faculty Development Relationships
- Amy Craig, Brandeis
- Carrie Macfarlane, Midd
- Janet Ewing, Mt. H.
December 4, Grasshopper
What is Scholarship and How Does It Affect Our Work?
- Lisa Zeidenberg, Brandeis
- Andy Wentik, Midd
- Leigh Mantel, Mt. H.
- James Lee, Brandeis
December 18, Muscovy Duck
Organizational Development
- David G. Wedaman, Ph.D., Brandeis
- Mike Roy, Midd
- Alex Wirth-Cauchon, Mt. H.
- Shel Sax, Midd
My title is Principal Curricular Technologist, a position at Middlebury within the Academic Consulting Services area. I also lead a Curricular Technology team and specialize in technologies for 2nd language acquisition. I am one of the principal designers of Segue, the curricular content management system currently in use at Middlebury (that we expect to replace in the coming year) and more recently have been developing a theming framework for WordPress. I participated in the Future of Everything NERCOMP symposium last spring, doing a presentation of the “Future of Learning Management Systems.” Other presentations I have done in the last year include Widgets in Education and iPods and 2nd Language Acquisition. I also attended some of the Project Bamboo workshops and contributed a scholarly narrative on collaborative translation and annotation to the Project Bamboo wiki.
I have worked closely with the Open Knowledge Initiative, overseeing the implementation of their open service interface definitions (OSIDs) into Harmoni, an application framework we developed that provides basic services to Segue as well as MiddMedia, our media repository service (Middlebury College received a Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration in 2007 for some of this work).
My background is in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies and I have a degree in History of Religions from University of Virginia. I have published a CD-ROM for learning Tibetan and more recently a series of language phrasebooks and study guides for mobile devices published by McGraw-Hill.
I’m Andy Wentink, Curator of Special Collections & Middlebury College Archives. As a member of the Academic Consulting Services group, I am principal liaison to American Studies, English & American Literatures, US History, Religion, Film & Media Culture, and History of Art & Architecture. In the past several years, I have supervised several major online exhibits and digital archives projects. In addition to bibiliographic and research instruction classes, I teach academic courses for American Studies, Film & Media Culture, Russian, and Dance. I work extensively with faculty in integrating primary sources, technology, and media and digtital resources into the curriculum. I look forward to this opportunity to share ideas on the promise of this challenging project with other participants.
I’m a Reference and Instruction Librarian at Middlebury with liaison responsibilities for Music and 9 of the 10 foreign languages taught here. I’m also the library liaison for the summer language schools. Like Bryan, I also serve on the Curricular Technologies Team and am a project manager for the web makeover. Changes in technology are changing the way we deliver services, and with my colleagues, am assessing reference services and testing new models of providing it.
I am the Electronic Services Librarian at Middlebury. I am a member of Academic Consulting Services in LIS, our merged Library and Information Services organization. I have served as library and technology liaison to many departments in my 6 1/2 years at Middlebury. Currently, I am a member of the Curricular Technology Team, a cross-functional team consisting of individuals drawn from several different areas within LIS. I also serve and the technology liaison to the summer Language Schools. Along with serving on the Web Redesign Committee, I am a project manager for several departments’ Web makeovers. I am the admin for SubjectsPlus (the open-source platform for our library subject guides) and CONTENTdm. To varying degrees, I have my admin hand in several other systems, including: the library catalog (Web interface), EZProxy, library’s current website, and Segue, our courseware. Additionally, I support these systems through training and troubleshooting. I provide training and support for library databases and tools as well as providing research instruction and consultation to students, faculty, and staff.
Background: In past lives (borrowed this idea from Dave W.) I worked at a dot-com, taught English as a 2nd language (in US and abroad) and German. I am foreign language as well as a tech geek. MLIS from Pitt. MA, BA from UF.
I’m Carrie Macfarlane, and I’m the Reference and Instruction Librarian for the Sciences at Middlebury. I’m a member of the “Academic Consulting Services” group that Mike Roy mentions below. For a few years now, I’ve been the library contact for most of the science departments. Recently, as a result of changes to the scope of our liaison program, I’ve become the library AND the technology contact for the sciences. So far, so good! While I’m talking with faculty about their library needs, we might as well talk about their technology needs too! One topic flows to the other quite naturally, it seems. I’m looking forward to working with all of you and finding out more about this seminar project.
Hi!
I’m Mike Roy. I work at Middlebury, where I’m the dean of library and information services, and acting director of a group that we call Academic Consulting Services. Library and Information Services is a merged Library/IT Shop, and Academic Consulting Services is our latest effort to try to organize a unit that can take advantage of our merged state by providing faculty and students with integrated, holistic, single-point of contact, alongside teams of experts and specialists. This seminar is a big step for us, as we (or at least I!) hope that it will help us think through what this new role of consultant should look like as we enter the 2nd decade of the 21st century.
I look forward to meeting you all in Bellows Falls on Friday!
– mike
Alex Wirth-Cauchon: Director of Research and Instructional Support (RIS), Mount Holyoke (awirthca@mtholyoke.edu)
RIS was created several years ago by merging the instructional technology and reference groups. It now includes collection development. Using Dave’s language, we are responsible for the liaison program, research assistance, instructional technology, CourseMS support (not back-end), collection development, multimedia support, statistical and scientific packages support, and more! We also are involved in digital collection development, though leadership of that is being spun off into an new unit.
Mount Holyoke College is “the first of the seven sisters” and still focuses on rigorous liberal arts education for women. MHC is part of the Five Colleges Inc. While we work closely with them on many projects, we are the only campus with a merged IT/Library structure. We are especially happy to learn with/from our peer institutions about how to make this model serve our mission more/most effectively.
I earned my Ph.D. in Sociology at Boston College. While leapfrogging through that program with my wife I spent more than eight years as a professional staff member in BC’s office of information technology (VAX/VMS Ultrix days…). I taught Sociology at Drake University and Grinnell College before doing faculty development work at Grinnell under a Mellon grant. Some of our work at Grinnell led to the creation of the Mellon-funded Midwest Instructional Technology Center (MITC) which I helped launch in 2002 and which merged with the Middlebury-based CET and ACSTC to become NITLE in 2006. I joined MHC in March of 2009.
Dave Wedaman: Director for Research and Instruction, Brandeis (wedaman@brandeis.edu)
Bio: I lead the RIS team at Brandeis, which combines a variety of librarians, instructional technologists, and other specialists to organize much of our academic or curricular-facing support to the university. We oversee a variety of areas: the liaison program, research assistance, instructional technology, course management system support, archives, special collections, resource sharing, institutional repository, collection development, multimedia support. Brandeis is a small university essentially combining a liberal arts college with a variety of strong graduate programs.
Background: In past lives I was our Academic Technology Coordinator, a Writing and French instructor, and a grad student (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature). I serve on the board of the Northeast Regional Computing Program and chair the committee that coordinates our SIG program.
Interest: We at Brandeis have been exploring the blended academic professional area for a few years; we were beginning to develop something like this seminar in-house, when we discovered Middlebury and Mt. Holyoke were also exploring similar paths. The opportunity to collaborate is compelling; we’ve been involved in similar inter-institutional collaborations in the past (for example, “WBW,” with Williams and Wesleyan focusing on IT services).
