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Library building plans
unfold
Exterior view courtesy of Shepley
Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott. More plans
We are excited to share news about long-awaited plans to renovate and expand
Donnelley Library. Over the past summer, the College was successful in
securing the funds that have allowed us to begin this project in earnest.
Groundbreaking is scheduled for next May, immediately following Commencement.
The project, which is expected to cost $18 million, will include a
new addition of 27,000 square feet and the complete renovation of
the existing 45,000 square foot Donnelley Library. It will take approximately
18 months to complete. The new facility should be completed by the
beginning of the 2004 fall semester.
The hallmark of the new building
will be its flexibility and accessibility. There will be a minimum
of permanent walls which will allow spaces to be reconfigured and
designed as new needs arise. A significant portion of the building
will be open twenty-four hours a day, including a cyber-café and a
large computer lab.
The new building is being designed to support
the convergence of "traditional" library functions with information
technology. It will feature areas where print tools and electronic
resources will exist side-by-side.
The building will contain several
"smart" classrooms equipped for hands-on library and technology instruction.
It will also feature a new and improved Technology Resource Center,
updated and expanded audiovisual facilities, and ample space for the
library's print collections. The lighting will be vastly improved.
Many seats within the building will be designed to facilitate collaborative
study, and each seat will have access to electrical outlets and data
drops. A wireless network will allow students with wireless devices
to connect to the campus network.
The architectural firm of Shepley
Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott (SBRA), a firm with extensive experience
in the design of college libraries, has been selected. SBRA architects
have been working with LIT staff and a Library Task Force composed
of students, faculty, trustees and administrative staff to develop
plans for the new facility. The architects will be on campus weekly
during the fall and spring, and there will be opportunities for members
of the community to meet with them.
Plans for the new facility are now on display in Donnelley
Library and online at www.lib.lfc.edu/bibliofiles/building.html. We hope you will take a look at the plans and
email us your comments and suggestions.
What's new at the library?
Library catalog
In August, the Library introduced a new version of the catalog.
The previous version, produced by DRA (now SIRSI), was no longer
being supported by the state-wide consortium of 44 libraries (ILCSO)
that the College is a part of. The new version, which is produced
by Des Plains-based Endeavor Information Systems, is a highly-regarded
catalog that has also been selected as the catalog for the Library
of Congress, Northwestern University, and Penn.
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While the Windows-based
staff modules are significant improvements, the public benefits
from easy-to-view Reserve information, more powerful relevancy
searching, and a product that is being continuously supported
and developed. Patrons will be able to renew items themselves
and to track their book requests. Have questions about the interface?
Talk to Cory Stevens, Head of Public Services, who serves on
the state-wide task force that designed - and is still tweaking
- the look and feel of the catalog. The new ILLINET Online is
available at https://i-share.carli.illinois.edu/
Pink Link
As any student or faculty member who uses Library journals can tell
you, the Pink Book is a list of journals physically owned by the College.
Printed on hot pink paper, these books are invaluable but difficult
to use. This summer, the Library created a web-based Pink Book called
the Journals List. This list not only indicates which journals the
library has in print or on microfilm, it also lists which journals
are available full-text online, and through which databases. Patrons
need only click on the appropriate link to be led to the article they
seek. This long-overdue and much-anticipated journals list has been
extremely popular with returning students and a significant tool for
the Library's Interlibrary Loan Department. It was developed
by David Levinson, Systems Librarian & Academic Technology Specialist
and Rebecca Miller, Reference Librarian, using Serials Solutions,
a library product, as its backbone. Visit the Journals List at http://library.lakeforest.edu/journals
Interlibrary Loan Forms online
If, after checking the Journals List, a patron realizes the journal
article they need isn't available at the College, they can fill
out an electronic journal article request form. The form, which can
be submitted online, will allow students to request articles from their
dorm rooms and faculty from their offices. It also saves the Interlibrary
Loan Department from having to interpret Palmer Method-lacking handwriting.
The form, and several other online Interlibrary Loan forms, were developed
by Nancy Bohm, Reference Librarian and Susan Cloud, Head of Interlibrary
Loan and are available at: http://library.lakeforest.edu/request/
Get online with Pipeline
 | Have you hosted an online discussion for your class? Have you used
an online calendar to remind students of important dates? Did you
know you can send mass emails to all your students? |
Last year's launching of Forester Pipeline brought with it a
unified web space that allowed Lake Forest College students to check
email, view transcripts and tuition balances, chat or post electronic
messages with other members of a class, and stay up-to-date on College
events. Many faculty also made use of class tools such as the Message
Board to extend classroom discussions beyond the limits of class sessions.
One of the more interesting uses of the Message Board came by way
of Dennis Mae and his Interpersonal Communications class. A board
was set up so that students logged in as "alternate personas"
with monikers like Born-again-Betty and Nerdy Norton. The semester-long
exercise enabled students to explore the emergence and subtleties
of bigotry, racism, and stereotyping in an anonymous community.
New features were added this summer, including web-based calendars,
Group Tools, and improved email. The Pipeline Calendar gives everyone
the ability to create and manage class, school-related, and personal
calendars, as well as invite others to join an event. Group Tools
provides a private portal where members of a group can interact and
communicate with each other with a variety of community tools, including
message boards, chat, photo galleries and news postings. Any group
on campus can be given access to its own Pipeline space, and members
of the college community can subscribe to a group in which they are
interested.
Gain access to Forester Pipeline at http://forester.lfc.edu. If you
don't know your username or password, contact Jill Zwicke at 735-5068.
For innovative ideas on using Pipeline for your classes, see Tech
Tips.
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This bookplate memorializes the donation by Herbert S. Stone of The Sister of a Saint
and Other Stories. Stone was a partner
in the 1890s avant garde, reform Chicago publishing venture, Stone
& Kimball. The plate includes the Harvard crest in an art nouveau
setting typical of the days of the original press. Learn more.
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Spam: not just for breakfast
anymore
Spam. Don't you just hate it? And we're not even talking
about the grocery store item.
We're talking about those pesky unsolicited emails that fill your
inbox advertising everything from low mortgage rates to pyramid
investment schemes to pornography. This past spring, the College
community experienced a sharp increase in spam. Why do people
send it? How do spammers get our email addresses? More to the
point, what can be done about it? These are the questions many
ask. |
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The use of the term "spam" to refer to junk email originated from a Monty
Python skit. In this comic routine, a man and woman at a restaurant
can't seem to order a breakfast that does not contain spam. In the background,
a chorus of vikings sing "spam, spam, spam..." more and more loudly,
until nothing else can be heard. According to the official
website of Spam (the food), "the analogy applied because junk email
was drowning out normal discourse on the Internet."
The question of "why" people send spam is the most difficult to answer. Some
spammers are actually trying to find potential customers. If you think
of email as an electronic version of paper mail, these folks are the
bulk mailers of the Internet. Most, though, seem not to be legitimate.
So why do they do it? It's unclear. Why do people vandalize? Why do
kleptomaniacs steal? Most of us probably can't begin to fathom the reasons.
How do spammers get our email addresses? This is less ambiguous.
Email addresses are everywhere, from business cards to online directories
like the College's. Just as there are bulk mailers, there are Internet
bulk mailing services that compile lists of email addresses from public
sources and sell or distribute them. If you've ever received an email
with any variation of "Click here to be taken off this list,"
do NOT click there. Doing so only lets spammers know they've hit a
valid email address. Best not to respond at all.
The answer to the big question - what can be done about all this spam
- is the most complicated. The ideal solution would be to have computers
read email and just get ride of the spam. In a way, it is possible
to just that. Most up-to-date browsers have filters. Your IT
liaison can explain your options and help configure your filters.
LIT has also been investigating what can be done on the server side
to filter out some of the more obvious spam. This is tricky because
in an academic environment, any type of censorship is problematic. Filtering
messages based on content is not really an acceptable solution. Nonetheless,
there are Internet sites known to be relayers of spam. Most of these
send very little legitimate email. Upgrades in software will allow us
to configure servers to block all messages from these sites and to check
the addresses of incoming email to make sure they are valid, rejecting
those that aren't.
Another trick of spammers is to put totally bogus "From"
addresses in their messages. While we can’t generally tell whether
a certain username exists on a remote system, we can configure our
e-mail software to check the machine name part of return addresses
to make sure they are valid, and reject any that are not.
Either of these server-side actions presents some danger of rejecting
legitimate e-mail, so they do increase the workload on our side in
reviewing rejected messages to "rescue" the
"false positives." However, we will be giving both of these
things a try in the coming months to see whether the results justify
the effort.
As much as we would all like to track spam back to its source and
get the senders shut down, the unfortunate truth is that it is usually
just not practical. Sometimes it isn't even possible. If a spammer
just sends out one or two batches of spam, the information needed
to track him or her down may not have been recorded anywhere. It has
become so easy to change your internet service provider, or even to
set up your own email server on the internet, that repeat spammers
can change their information so rapidly that you can't keep up
with them. Even if a spammer is not that clever, the time and effort
required to trace him or her are usually prohibitive, except in cases
where enough damage has been done to make it worth someone's
while.
Some spam comes in the form of virus hoaxes, which scare people
about viruses which actually do not exist. Beyond needlessly alarming
people, these hoaxes can have the unfortunate result of making people
less inclined to believe any virus warning. McAfee
Security provides a list of known virus hoaxes, so you can check
whether a warning you receive is legitimate or not.
The bottom line on spam: LIT will be doing what it can to remove the
obvious junk, but some will continue to trickle in. Your best bet for
now is to filter out what you can and delete the rest as it appears
in your inbox.
Architect Profile: Geoffrey Freeman, AIA
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Geoff is one of the three architects designing the new Donnelley Library. He is a Principal at Shepley Bulfinch
Richardson and Abbott, a national architectural firm based in Boston,
and is a nationally recognized authority on library planning and design. His chief interest as an architect is in contributing to the continuing advancement of education, in how people learn, and how architecture affects the teaching and learning process. A teacher himself, Geoff worked as an Instructor in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard College while earning his Masters degree in Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. His extensive client list includes more than 80 colleges and universities across the country, including Princeton University, University of Chicago, Dartmouth College, Grinnell College, Harvard University, Northwestern University, and Yale University.
-Courtesy of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott
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MITC technology programs underway
Exciting new technology programs are on their way to the Lake Forest
College campus as a result of funding from the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Working through the National Institute for Technology & Liberal Education (NITLE),
the Foundation supports three regional technology centers. These
centers provide workshops, symposia, and grant dollars for small liberal
arts colleges. The center that serves the Associated College of the
Midwest (ACM) and the Midwest
Instructional Technology Center (MITC). MITC's mission is to promote
the Mellon Foundation's strategy of organizing and supporting intellectual,
infrastructural, and financial collaboration among institutions to realize
the potential of technology for the improvement of liberal arts education.
Several College faculty and staff participated in MITC-sponsored
events this summer. Academic Technologist Diane Snedden and Professor
of Economics Carolyn Tuttle attended a week-long social sciences conference
at Grinnell College. They worked on developing a template for an econometrics
web module to be used in Professor Tuttle's senior seminar on American
labor. Carolyn then traveled to Colorado College to share the concept
of a web module to other social scientists interested in quantitative
literacy and
web modules.
Assistant Professor of Art Tom Denlinger and Systems Librarian &
Academic Technologist David Levinson attended a workshop on digital
video in Georgetown, Texas. Diane Snedden also attended a workshop on
web page development. Cory Stevens, Head of Public Services, attended
a planning meeting at the Colorado College with other ACM and GLCA librarians
and academic technologists.
Other faculty-led projects are already underway to work collaboratively
with ACM and GLCA institutions to develop curricular materials, cross-campus
projects, and to share resources. Christopher Reed, Associate Professor
of Art, hosted an October symposium to bring together art and art history
faculty to discuss joint projects and areas of opportunity.
Assistant Professor of Economics Allison Roberts and Diane Snedden
will be working on a "learning object" or module on the value
of money over time. This work will be shared at another Information
Literacy Conference next summer.
| A workshop held at the Center for Educational Technology at
Middlebury College awarded Lake Forest College access to reduced
pricing to some powerful software that will be new on our campus.
Politics Professor Paul Fischer and Diane Snedden attended a workshop
that introduced them to two types of GIS (Geographical Information
Systems) software, its varied uses in the Social Sciences, as
well as hands on experience using GPS (Geographical Positioning
Systems) recording instruments. GIS software is generally regarded
as very useful for Environmental and Geographical Sciences but
is increasingly popular as a research tool for historians, sociologists,
environmental psychologists, archeologists and economists.
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ArcView
and MapInfo are the two variations of GIS software that the college
will be purchasing. This software will be available to faculty
for small classroom projects in upper level courses or for research
projects. Three to five licenses will be purchased for the purposes
of faculty and staff learning and the development of curriculum
projects.
While they were learning about possible uses for GIS, Paul and Diane
were fortunate enough to spend 4 wonderful days at the charming Middlebury
Inn and mingle with other faculty, library and technology people from
the Associated Colleges of the East. One of the objectives for sending
faculty to conferences such as these is to give them information they
can bring back to their own campuses. A synergistic affect occurs
as a result. Exposure to other liberal arts faculty and technology
professionals spawns new ideas and enthusiasm for the technology tools
that are available for teaching and learning. Sharing of knowledge
and ideas occurs after the workshop ends and new lines of communications
are opened across campuses. This is precisely the goal of the NITLE
(National Institute for Technology and Learning in Education) organization.
As a member of that larger group, the Midwest Technology Resource
Center can make available resources that would not be available to
member colleges acting as a lone institution.
LIT BiblioFiles
Vol. 3 No. 1
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Published through the Library and Information
Technology
department of Lake Forest
College.
Managing editor ... Rebecca Miller
Copy editor ... Cory Stevens
Technical Support ... Nancy Bohm
Editorial Staff ... Stephanie Askeland, Marylin Bell,
Jim Cubit,
Linda Mathiesen, Diane Snedden, and
Cory Stevens
Visit the Donnelley Library home page at www.lib.lfc.edu
Articles may be reprinted provided proper attribution is given.
Email comments and questions to bibliofiles@lfc.edu
Printable version
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