Tag: staff

New Staff Announcements

Lise Gazzillo

Over the last month, Library IT has had the good fortune of welcoming two new staff members.

In early June, Keith Boyd-Carter joined LIT as an Operating Systems Programmer for Enterprise Systems and Services. He began working in this role last October as a contractor making the leap to staff quickly this past June. In this capacity, Keith performs system management, application deployment and infrastructure upgrades. His first project at Yale was to work on the Avalon Media System for the Gilmore Music Library. The Avalon Media System is an open-source system for managing and providing access to large collections of digital audio and video.

Prior to coming to Yale, Keith worked for Owl Cyber Defense Solutions as a Quality Assurance Technician. Keith quickly grew in his role at Owl from QA Technician to Systems Administrator. Owl Cyber Defense Solutions focuses on cyber security for networks using a patented technology.  Keith received his degree in Computer Engineering and Technology at Central Connecticut State University. He looks forward to incorporating new technologies for the ease of day-to-day operations, as was evidenced by his June Tech Talk about using Ansible at SML.

Also, in June,  Lise Gazzillo joined LIT as the Client Engagement Coordinator. In this role, Lise is responsible for the Library IT’s outreach and communication efforts. She will plan and produce LIT’s monthly “Tech Talks” as well as the monthly newsletter. If you any ideas or topics for future “Tech Talks” you would like to explore she would love to hear your thoughts, email her at lise.gazzillo@yale.edu. Lise will also develop a LIT brand book based on client feedback and in coordination with University and Library branding. Managing and creating content for LIT’s social media presence is another project Lise will undertake.

Lise has been designing and producing websites since there were only 216 browser-safe colors to use. She was responsible for creating and producing content for Time Warner’s Road Runner Service, one of the country’s first broadband cable modem services. She worked with Microsoft Consulting Group, based out of New York City, creating multiple user interface designs for their clients. A project she is particularly proud of completing was a STEAM website for the National Academy of Science titled, “Engineer Girl!” She has a vast knowledge of content strategy, specializing in non profits and startups. Lise is excited about her new role and is looking forward to applying her experience to upcoming LIT projects.

 

Keith and Lise can be reached at keith.boyd-carter@yale.edu  and lise.gazzillo@yale.edu respectively. Welcome to the Team!

Library IT Welcomes Summer Interns

Lise Gazzillo
Building on last year’s success, LIT has joined forces with New Haven Promise again and accepted 3 new summer interns.  We are excited to welcome Annissa Carter, Bryana Kilpatrick, and Jhoselyn Jara. All three students are New Haven natives and upperclassmen studying at area colleges.
Annissa and Bryana both attend the University of Connecticut. Annissa is going into her Senior year and is majoring in Human Development and Family Studies.  She plans to practice Social Work after graduation, she intends to put her education and passion towards social change. She also happens to be related to one of LIT’s recent hires, Keith Boyd-Carter, who was recently hired as a Systems Programmer.  They found out they were both working in the same department getting onto the elevator. Bryana is a Junior currently majoring in Electrical Engineering and Physics. She hopes to further her studies after graduation and go on to earn her Masters degree.  Our third intern,  Jhoselyn Jara, is a Junior studying at Central Connecticut State University. Jhoselyn  is majoring in Psychology currently and was planning to go into Occupational Therapy, although after taking an Abnormal Psychology class this past semester she is reconsidering pursuing Clinical Psychology.
All three of our summer interns are New Haven Promise Scholars. New Haven Promise is a scholarship program that awards scholarships to New Haven residents who attend New Haven Public Schools or an approved charter school. In order to be considered for the New Haven Promise program, students must demonstrate a positive attitude, maintain a GPA of 3.0 or higher at graduation, and have completed 40 hours of community service over four years of high school. While pursuing their degrees New Haven Scholars receive continued support with job fairs and assistance in job placement. The opportunity for Scholars to build  real-world experience by finding practical summer internships in invaluable. This is Annissa’s second summer internship at Yale, she previously worked at Yale Art Gallery.
New Haven Promise has been a successful partner with LIT and we are fortunate to have the additions to our team and look forward to a productive summer! 

Learn about discovery interfaces at YUL with Rediscover Discovery

Jenn Nolte

Last year, after the successful upgrade of our Articles+ e-resource discovery service and the beginning of the public beta phase of our Quicksearch unified discovery interface, library staff held an information session called Rediscovery Discovery, where we demonstrated features, functionality and sample search strategies in the Articles+ discovery interface and debuted the Quicksearch discovery interface.

This year, we will hold Rediscover Discovery again, covering Articles+ but with more focus Quicksearch. We will also introduce the digital collections search currently in development.

Rediscover Discovery is primarily aimed at instruction and public services staff, but is open to anyone who’d like to attend. Please register for each session as space is limited!

There will be two information sessions:

  • Tuesday August 18th, 10-11am in Bass L06 A&B register
  • Thursday August 20th, 2:30-3:30pm in 17 Hillhouse L07 register

See you at Rediscover Discovery!

Adobe Connect now available for virtual meetings

Jenn Nolte

Earlier this year, Yale ITS acquired Adobe Connect, a video conferencing service. Over the fall 2014 semester, Library IT tested Adobe Connect with the equipment in several library conference rooms on campus (see blog announcements here and here).

We began this testing to ensure that library staff persons at every library location are able to maintain their meeting schedules easily, regardless of their physical location, particularly in advance of staff moving to 344 Winchester. We are pleased to announce that the testing was successful, and that Adobe Connect can be used effectively in these rooms for video conferencing.

Adobe Connect is supported centrally through Yale ITS; for help with Adobe Connect please visit this page or contact the central ITS Help Desk. 

Get started by logging in to Adobe Connect using your email address and NetId password:  http://greet.yale.edu
Detailed instructions are here.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: before using Adobe Connect for your virtual meeting, please do a 10-minute test of the setup in the room you are using. Contact Jenn Nolte and Reon Keller if you need help with the initial setup.

Always add 5-10 minutes for set up in advance of your virtual meeting!

Adobe Connect Features:

Audio and video

Text Chat

Screen sharing

Layouts for different meeting types, plus additional layout customization

File upload

Polling

Send invitations to a meeting in Outlook

Meeting recording (turned off by default)

Conference/meeting rooms tested:

  • Lewis Walpole
  • Sterling 315, 332, 409 and 511
  • BRBL conference rooms (check with Julie Dowe)
  • CSSSI
  • Medical
  • Divinity

Required equipment in conference rooms for Adobe Connect to work:

Video camera (most conference rooms will have this, contact Workstation Support if you don’t see this equipment)
Monitor

Microphone (built into the above; this is also available – contact Workstation Support for details)

Desktop computer

 

Please email Jenn Nolte and Reon Keller if you have any questions!

Library IT Spotlight on: User Experience Group

Katie

The User Experience Group in Library IT is the newest unit of the LIT department. It was formed with the express purpose of keeping our patrons’ needs at the forefront of all library digital projects. The work of the group is focused on major library digital interfaces, including:

  • The library’s web site, web.library.yale.edu. The web site is maintained in a Drupal content management system. We use a Yale wide Drupal instance called YaleSites.
  • Major vendor-provided services such as Springshare’s products Libguides (Library subject guides), and Libcal (room scheduling and hours).
  • Search interfaces such as Orbis and Articles+. A large amount of the group’s work has recently involved Quicksearch, a Blacklight search combining records from the Orbis and Morris catalogs, along with records from Articles+.
  • In support of these interfaces the group does usability testing and tracks metrics. 

Within this new group we have a very new position of an Emerging Digital Analyst. With this new addition we are adding communication and staff support to our portfolio of work.

The UX Group recently had time to do some strategic planning, and we reflected on the purpose of our group, our priorities and also feedback we received through the LIT Satisfaction Survey. From those reflections we’ve formed some guiding principles. In our efforts we will

  • work collegially with all library staff
  • communicate in multiple ways, and give staff opportunities to give us feedback
  • strive to meet deadlines, and acknowledge honestly when we cannot 
  • focus on a service model as opposed to a project model, and include planning for ongoing support when work is completed
  • use metrics to guide decisions
  • work to be trusted experts in user experience

We invite you to contact any of the staff listed here with your questions and comments. We would like to hear from you.

User Experience Staff

Katie Bauer (kathleen.bauer@yale.edu)

User Experience Librarian

I’m the manager of the UX group, and also focus on usability, Google Analytics and metrics for digital interfaces. Originally from upstate New York, I grew up in a very rural area in a pretty large family with three brothers and a sister. I went to college at Mount Holyoke and studied mathematics, which I continued in a master’s program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where I earned an M.S in Applied Mathematics. I taught math for several years before going into a librarianship program at SUNY Albany. I’ve been at Yale for 17 years in various positions in the library system.

I’m married and have two grown children in college. I live in Hamden with my husband and two dogs, and spend much of my free time enjoying the outdoors taking hikes with them (when it isn’t freezing cold).

My office is in SML 510, and my phone number is 432-2491

Jenn Nolte (jennifer.nolte@yale.edu)

Emerging Digital Services Analyst

I grew up on the Connecticut coastline and have lived in CT my whole life. I earned a BA in English and Women’s Studies from Fairfield University in 2003, and my MLIS (Master of Library and Information Science) from Southern Connecticut State University in 2013.

I’ve worked in SML for 11 years now, 10 of those in the Library IT office. I came to Yale in 2004 as a Catalog Assistant in the Catalog Management Team, working on the massive OCLC Reconciliation project. A year later I moved to Library IT, where I became responsible for MARC record loads to the Orbis catalog, among other duties.

Today I am responsible for supporting Articles+, the library’s discovery interface for licensed e-resources. I co-chair the E-resource Access Group with our Electronic Resource Librarian, Angela Sidman. I am involved in implementation of the Quicksearch beta service, a unified discovery service powered by Blacklight and meant to provide a single search across several library resources at one time. I run a monthly Emerging Technologies + Libraries discussion, open to all library staff and Yale community members, and I also do a good deal of communication about LIT work, including running the departmental social media accounts and compiling and sending the LIT newsletter and the Digital Initiatives newsletter. I am on the L-SARC committee, and I am also a Personal Librarian!

My office is in SML 609 and my phone is 432 4878. Please feel free to stop by of call and say hello! I am happy to answer any questions or refer you to someone who can.

Kalee Sprague (kalee.sprague@yale.edu)

Senior Systems Librarian for Integrated Access

I am originally from Bozeman, Montana, although I lived and attended school for many years in Billings, Montana.  I earned a BA in Spanish Literature from the University of Minnesota, and my M.L.I.S. from the University of California, Berkeley.

I have worked for the Library for 18 years, first as a Database Analyst working primarily with Orbis, then as a Systems Librarian in the Programming group working with a variety of systems like Yufind, the Finding Aids database, the Orbis public interface, the new Findit digital collections system, and Quicksearch, the new Blacklight-based discovery system.

Currently I am in the User Experience group. As part of that group, I am the project manager for the Quicksearch project (http://search.library.yale.edu), coordinating the work of the Quicksearch Implementation team.  In addition, I am currently the Technical Lead on the project, using technologies like Ruby on Rails, HAML, and Javascript / CSS to mold Quicksearch to meet the needs of YUL users.  Occasionally I also work on the Findit digital collections interface.  In support of both of these projects, I chair the Discovery and Systems Metadata group, coordinating the work of metadata specialists to identify correct metadata mappings for these two projects and create guidelines like the Discovery Metadata for Digital Materials manual.  Finally, I support the production Orbis interface, the Finding Aids interface, and am a Personal Librarian.

I sit in room 609 and can be reached at 2-7845.

 

Meng Tang (meng.tang@yale.edu)

CIS Support Specialist

I came to Yale as an Acquisition Assistant, and later became a Cataloging Assistant.  From being a member of the Workstation Support Group to my current position in Library IT, I have had the chance to visit all the libraries, meet many people, and do many hardware and software support tasks.  I love having the chance to learn new technology and the challenge of solving problems.  I started learning the Drupal platform for the library’s website when I joined the UX group in late 2013 and am looking for any possible future benefits that this system can bring to us.

Steve Wieda (steven.wieda@yale.edu)

Senior Web Developer

I have worked with academic research libraries since 1998, serving both IT and administrative leadership roles centered on web communications and technologies.  During that time it has been my pleasure to work with amazing people on fascinating projects that have positively impacted the institutions I have served and beyond.

At the Yale University Library, I will be leading the LibGuides 2 implementation, managing the continuing migration to YaleSites, and providing consulting services for website construction, content management, usability, and accessibility.  I will also administer the YUL YaleSites/Drupal site, the Library’s various webservers, and the mailman list-servs.  In the coming months I’m looking very forward to meeting as many of you as possible.  Together we will build and maintain a fabulous web presence for the Yale University Library.

Spotlight on Library IT Staff: Workstation and Technology Services

Jenn Nolte

Following on the staff bios for the Digital Library & Programming group and the newly reorganized Enterprise Systems & Services group, Library IT would like to turn the spotlight on the Workstation & Technology Services group.

Here is a closer look at the members of the Workstation & Technology Services group:

Greg Blasko; Manager, IT Infrastructure & Client Services

gregory.blasko@yale.edu

An employee of Yale University since 1996, I have spent a majority of my career supporting various technologies in the School of Medicine’s Keck Foundation Biotechnology Resource Laboratory. At Keck, I managed all IT operations including supervising desktop support specialists, providing server support, and designing mission critical FileMaker Pro databases used to manage all financial aspects and laboratory operations of the department. In October of 2013, I joined the Yale University Library and now manage a team of support technicians maintaining the reliability and security of a large computing infrastructure for Library staff and patrons. Some accomplishments during my first 14 months here at YUL include the adoption of ServiceNow as a ticketing system, the reduction of backup overage charges resulting in savings of over $5,600 per month, the successful migration of over 100 workstations from Windows XP to Windows 7, and the establishment of several key relationships between YUL and Central ITS. Some of my favorite off hour activities include skiing, mountain biking, playing guitar and most of all being a dad!

Reon Keller; IT Support Technician

reon.keller@yale.edu

I started working at Yale 2003 as a casual, providing remote access support including but not limited to VPN. In 2008 became a permanent employee for Technical Support. I have a strong background in desktop and mobile device support and networking. With some years under my belt, I now provide technical support throughout YUL. I deliver hands-on support and collaboration in special projects, software training, software upgrade and rollouts, to name a few things.

Frederick Rodriguez; IT Support Technician

frederick.rodriguez@yale.edu

Before coming to the Library in 2010, I worked as a researcher in the Department of Immunobiology at Yale Medical School for 7 years. The former 4 years of my work I preformed experiments and analyzed data to look at Stat-6 regulatory gene in a mouse EAE model and the proliferation-activated receptor-y agonists remodeling of human artery induced by allocative T-cells. The latter 3 years, I co-lead the implementation of a database that stored both human and mouse tissues for the Yale JDRF Center. When I joined Workstation and Technology Support unit, I was tasked with converting all of my support units and public computers to Windows 7, and managing Mac computers along with iPads for the library as a whole. I have worked on a few special projects such as Office 2007 training, upgrading AV infrastructure and scanners in public areas, managing the iPad teaching initiative pilot along with ITG, and maintaining a standard computer image both 32- and 64-bit. On my personal time I enjoy running, watching “Newsroom” and “The Big Bang Theory,” eating chocolate :-), drinking wine :-)), and reading about theoretical computation, robotics, biological science, and the latest technology.

Jerzy Grabowski; IT Support Technician, MSSA / Beinecke

jerzy.grabowski@yale.edu

As an accomplished Information Technology support professional with over 12 years of comprehensive experience in a multi-site, multi-host, networked environment, I appreciate supporting clients on both sides of the Wall Street tunnel, effectively delivering technical advice to Library personnel. I’m the newest member of the Workstation and Technology Services Staff, starting my career at Yale in January 2013 as temporary employee. Since July 2013, I have supported both Manuscripts and Archives and Beinecke Library staff. It is awesome to work for Yale University Libraries. My pastimes are tennis, skiing and fishing.

Library IT Reorganization, Enterprise Systems and Services

Raymond Frohlich

I am pleased to announce a reorganization of the two units within Library IT that currently report to me, and the addition of two new staff members to the department. Effective immediately, Enterprise Systems and Programming Services, and Systems Infrastructure and Integration Services will be combined into a single unit within Library IT. The new group is known as Enterprise Systems and Services. In addition, I am delighted to announce that Cindy Greenspun and Lauren King will transition from Access Services and join Enterprise Systems and Services.

These changes are intended to enhance and broaden services provided to the Library, address various staffing changes that have occurred over the last six months, and increase internal efficiencies. A brief overview of the staff and their areas of responsibility follow in an effort to clarify who you should reach out to if you have questions or need assistance. Updates to the Library and departmental organizational charts are forthcoming.

 

Cindy Greenspun, Business Systems Analyst

Cindy is a direct report and will be responsible for current and future integrated library systems with a focus on circulation subsystems, access management systems that provide physical and virtual access to the Library and its resources, and the development of technical solutions to automate and improve workflows and processes.

 

Lauren King, Technical Assistant

Lauren will report to Cindy Greenspun and continue to work with Yale ITG in support of the iPad Loan Program in Bass Library, provide assistance updating web content for Access Services, and assist with the work of the unit.

 

Yue Ji, Senior Programmer Analyst

Yue is a direct report and will continue to be responsible for the development, implementation, and support of software solutions that both enhance enterprise systems such as ORBIS and ArchivesSpace and improve workflows and processes.

 

Robert Rice, Technical Lead

Bob is a direct report and will have a broad set of responsibilities to support the entire lifecycle of core systems and storage infrastructure for the Library and explore opportunities to transition services to providers such as Yale ITS, library vendors, and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon Web Services.

 

Steve DiSorbo, Senior Systems Programmer

Steve will report to Bob Rice and provide Unix, Linux, Windows Server, and VMware systems administration, systems programming, storage, and database support for Yale University Library’s local and hosted infrastructure.

 

Steelsen Smith, Business Systems Analyst

Steelsen is a direct report and will provide a leadership role in supporting current and future fulfillment systems and their respective user communities. This includes systems such as Aeon, Ares, ILLiad, consortial programs and associated systems, and GFA LAS.

 

Melissa Wisner, Senior Systems Librarian

Melissa is a direct report and will provide a leadership role in supporting current and future collections management systems and their respective user communities. This includes systems such as Voyager, ArchivesSpace, and Aeon.

 

I would like to thank Bernadette Cioffi, Michael Dula, Russell Epstein, Brad Warren, and the institutional union representative Kevin Pacelli for their assistance throughout the transition. I would like to also thank the staff in Enterprise Systems and Services for their patience, feedback, and high level of engagement throughout this reorganization.