The new Multimedia Presentation Center has been created in the all-night reading room. The MPC is jointly supported by the Library and ITS staff in collaboration with the Writing Center and Oral Communication Center. The focus of the MPC is to assist students in developing excellent communication skills through presentations utilizing a variety of media.
A workshop was held for faculty teaching sophomore seminars. Sponsored by the HILLgroup (http://www.hamilton.edu/academics/hillgroup/index.html), the Oral Communication program, and the Dean of Faculty's Office, this seminar was designed to highlight support services that are available to assist faculty and students in support of the new curriculum. Another workshop is planned for the fall semester.
The Library and ITS began planning for the creation of an Information Commons coming in the summer of 2003. This jointly supported facility will become a major hub of learning and research on campus, bringing together the professional assistance of both reference librarians and information technology staff, high-capacity computing tools and the print and electronic resources of the Library to provide a single point of service for the campus.
Initiatives Supporting Individualized Information Access and Management:
The Library has implemented a new online catalog, providing significantly increased searching options. It provides:
More powerful search, with options for basic and advanced searching
Display of up to 50 titles on an index screen, allowing you to find titles you want with much less paging through screens
Improved navigation among screens
Direct and easy access to electronic resources
Easy printing, emailing, and saving records
Ability to limit searches to specific collections, languages, dates of publication
The first version of the campus portal (My Hamilton) was introduced on August 12th. The portal is a web-based view of information that is customized to needs of various campus constituents and can be personalized by each individual to reflect the way they use information. The goal of the portal is provide a single point of access to all the information people need at Hamilton. http://my.hamilton.edu/aboutmyhamilton
The Employee Storage Server provides all employees and departments with space on a central server to backup personal files and share files with other people in their department.
ListServ, the software used to manage our mass E-mail lists, was upgraded. The new version provides web access to all of ListServ's functions allowing list owners and users to manage all their activities using a web browser. http://listserv.hamilton.edu
Implemented Calendar Express - a web-based personal calendaring system with group scheduling capabilities.
Initiatives to Enhance the Teaching Environment:
Synchronization between information in the Registrar's system and the Blackboard system was automated. This ensures that Blackboard reflects a student's true status in a course. Any changes must now be made through the Registrar's Office, not directly in the Blackboard system.
Four technology-enhanced classrooms have been upgraded to contain both Macintosh and Windows computers (previously they had only Macintosh computers using Virtual PC). In addition, a lectern and two computers are being placed in the Red Pit.
The Assembly Room and the Fisher Room on the third floor of Bristol Campus Center were equipped with data projectors to support the sophomore seminars that will take place in those rooms.
To Prepare for the Integration of the Science Library into Burke, the Following Changes Have Taken Place:
Half of the ITS staff have been relocated to Buttrick Hall (see http://www.hamilton.edu/college/its/). This is the first step in the process of installing compact shelving in the basement of Burke and the creation of new ITS offices on the third floor. When the new offices are complete next summer eight faculty study carrels currently used by ITS staff will return to their original purpose.
The general-purpose computer lab (Burke 002) has been relocated to the former all night reading room.
A new all-night study facility will be located in the Beinecke Village which will feature an all-night diner and quiet areas for study.
Initiatives to Enhance Infrastructure and Improve Support Services:
The campus connection to the Internet was increased by a third to 12 Mbs to handle the increase in off-campus network traffic.
The Colleague and Benefactor Datatel server was upgraded to a faster, highly redundant system.
Over 200 computers were replaced as part of the annual computer replacement plan.
We changed our billing approach for telephone services. TAG Solutions, LLC is now providing billing services to students for their local and long distance calling. This new agreement provides students with lower calling rates and improved services. Students and administrative offices will now have access to their monthly call records over the web.
A new and improved network assistant CD was developed to help new students connect their computers to the campus network.
The Track-It! software used to manage Help Desk call tracking was upgraded to version 5.0. This release enables ITS to offer a web interface to all users so they may submit trouble "tickets" via the web and at the same time search our growing collection of on-line, customized solutions.
Music Library hours are expanded, opening earlier on Sunday and staying open longer Monday through Thursday.
Initiatives to Enhance Electronic Resources:
The Library added the JSTOR Language and Literature Collection, providing full-text access to 47 periodical titles, and Anthropological Literature, which indexes nearly 900 journals and monographic series held in Harvard University's Tozzer Library. Both are available from the library homepage, under 'databases.'
A searchable list of all the full-text journals the library has access to, regardless of source, is available from the library's homepage: http://www.hamilton.edu/library/data/serials/index.html This electronic journals list contains over 9,500 e-journals available from large databases (like LexisNexis), publishers, and other sources. Many of the journals listed have also been cataloged in the library catalog. To see which journals the library owns in paper and/or electronic format, look up the journal title in the Hamilton College Library Catalog (http://lib.hamilton.edu).
