Stay up-to-date with the latest news in higher education

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For those in the academic community, The Chronicle of Higher Education is the go-to source for the latest news, information, trends, jobs and opinion and analysis of issues in higher ed. Through a subscription provided by LTS  the Brandeis community has access to this valuable resource.

In addition to the complete content of the latest issue, the online version of The Chronicle, published every weekday, contains many additional features such as a searchable archive of articles published since 1989, job listings and career building tools such as online CV management and salary databases, commentary, advice columns, statistics and data, blogs, discussion forums, and multimedia.

Subjects span the breadth of academia including teaching, research, academic freedom, publishing, students, libraries, technology, leadership and governance, government and politics, international news, careers, athletics, fundraising, and many more.

A sampling of recent Chronicle content includes

Publisher Threatens to Sue Blogger for $1-Billion

Biologists and Humanities Scholars Break the Code on Digital Partnerships

Discussion and debate about MOOCs

Interactive tools:

Find out what college presidents make

Explore college tuitions over time

Register for a free account on The Chronicle website and get the latest news and information sent to your email every weekday.

LTS is exploring additional ways of offering The Chronicle of Higher Education content to our community, including the Chronicle’s iPad app for accessing Chronicle content. Please fill out this poll indicating your interest in access to an iPad app for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Written by Wendy Lee and Katy Collins

 

Digital Humanities: From 1851?

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Starting about 1990, I began doing something that is now called digital humanities.  In a blog post from October 2012, I traced the history of digital humanities from the present back to the late 1940s, locating its origin in Father Roberto Busa, who worked with IBM on a punch-card concordance of the works of Thomas Aquinas, which you can now find online, in searchable database form.

In this blog post, however, I am going to suggest that we might want to push that point of origin for digital humanities back further—almost a hundred years, to 1851.

Recently, I gave a talk about the history of digital humanities at the University of Maryland at College Park. Preparing for that talk, I was looking for parallels or points of connection between the history of computation in life sciences and in the humanities.  There are some, and that’ll be the subject of a future blog post.  But as part of my research for that event, I re-read Susan Hockey’s excellent chapter on the history of digital humanities, in the Blackwell Companion to Digital Humanities.

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Site-to-site VPN for Amazon Web Services

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NetSys has been examining Amazon Web Services (AWS) and how we might leverage their offerings to improve our community services.  An early goal was to install a remote Active Directory authentication server. Active Directory acts as the authentication source for CoSign, which is the web-based login portal for many services available to Brandeis faculty, staff and students. This is something we’re pondering because it may allow us to provide the ability to authenticate and use Google Apps (Gmail, Calendar etc) even if there’s a catastrophic outage on campus.

While exploring our options, we needed a way to secure traffic between our data center and the Amazon cloud without the additional cost of the Amazon Virtual Private Gateway.  We’re not willing to invest $0.05 per hour for a virtual private network (VPN) solution that will be sitting idle for a large percentage of the time.  With cost and security in mind, we decided to build our own solution using open source software.

There is detailed series of posts on the Netsys blog explaining our implementation. The series is rather technical; I’ll summarize it by telling you that we’ve built a private site-to-site VPN using OpenVPN, a lightweight, open source SSL VPN solution. The VPN connection is bilateral; both sides of the connection run the same version of the OpenVPN software, one configured to act as the server and the other as the client. The servers running the software are Linux based.

The VPN server runs on the Amazon cloud and waits for the client to connect. This machine is where the majority of the configuration for the VPN connection is hosted. The client, which runs on the XenServer virtualization platform here on campus, connects to the remote server and the two build the private network between themselves.

With the secure tunnel between Brandeis and Amazon established, we configure the remote authentication server to send Active Directory traffic destined for our domain controllers through the private network. We also configure our domain controllers to send traffic destined for the remote server through the VPN. This ensures that all traffic is encrypted before being sent across the Internet.

Active Directory isn’t the only traffic we can direct through the VPN; there are many potential applications for this. Now that we have a method for protecting network traffic between the sites, we can focus on determining just how the Brandeis community can take advantage of Amazon’s services.

Public Syllabi

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Brandeis faculty can now choose to publish their course syllabi publicly!  This new option enables faculty to make syllabi available to colleagues at peer institutions, makes it even easier for students to get course details before registration, and helps the University promote its curriculum to prospective students.  This capability is available immediately and will also be part of the updated version of LATTE slated for release in January 2014.

When an instructor uploads a syllabus in his or her LATTE course, he or she will be able to click on a “Make Syllabus Public” link.  This link publishes the syllabus on the Registrar’s public schedule of classes web page.  Instructions are available on the LATTE Help Website.
[Screenshot of a class description with public syllabus link.]

After hearing faculty requests for this new feature in meetings and and informal conversations, LTS staff included it in a larger project designed to ease the sharing of course descriptions across Brandeis websites.  The Web & Middleware Development group and Project Management office worked in close partnership with the Office of the Registrar and IBS throughout this effort.

Where are the newspapers?

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I keep telling my wife Betsy that, given the numerous electronic devices in our home, it’s economically irresponsible to get a print newspaper (not to mention a failure to keep up with the times), but she still insists that we continue with our print subscription to the Boston Globe. Though it is true that people continue to find pleasure in reading print newspapers and that LTS still has a small selection of local, national and international current print newspapers on the main floor of Goldfarb Library, it is important to keep in mind that LTS provides convenient access to many more newspapers in electronic form.

If you want to browse today’s New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post or the Chicago Tribune, try our database Factiva, which, besides including archives, sometimes as far back as the early 1980s, has a nice browsing feature for the past couple of weeks for these widely read newspapers.

We have all read about the crisis in the newspaper industry, the closure of several newspapers and many readers’ preferences for reading brief news content online. However, some newspapers, such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, arguably our flagships, are probably more read than ever due to the Internet. According to a 12/06/2012 article entitled “The Truth About Newspapers in the 21st Century” in the Huffington Post, “newspapers … are integrating technological innovations to amplify their content distribution and outreach … [creating] a portfolio of products that will in turn address the changing needs of the customers.”

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March is Women’s History Month

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LTS offers a variety of resources in every discipline for you to explore during Women’s History Month and beyond.   This month’s highlights include, an important historical newspaper for women, a very influential historical women’s magazine and several databases.  These provide insights into the daily lives of women from diaries and letters, social movement activities and  women’s  impact on economic life covering the period from 1600-2000 but focusing mostly on 1800-2000.

The Lily, 1849-1853 the first newspaper for women was edited by Amelia Bloomer.  It began as a place women could write about temperance issues and their role as “defenders of the home”.  “Intemperance is the great foe to her peace and happiness…. Surely, she has the right to wield her pen for its Suppression”.   Gradually, more interests were also explored including child rearing and education.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, writing under the pseudonym “sunflower”, began including issues of women’s rights and about laws unfair to women demanding change.  Bloomer became very interested in dress reform, advocating for a more comfortable outfit, a knee-length dress with pants which became known as “bloomers”.   The Lily had a national circulation of 6,000 in 1853.

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Open Access Videos Online

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You may have heard of the White House’s recent memo advocating that research funded by public money be freely available to all; it raised the profile of Open Access to national significance.

Open Access is a topic on our campus, too: two highly acclaimed speakers came to Brandeis in December to talk on the subject, and their talks are now online for those who were unable to attend.

Sue Kriegsman, Program Manager of the Harvard University Office for Scholarly Communication, talked about Harvard’s experience implementing Open Access policies and, in particular, an online repository to share faculty publications.

William Scott, Emeritus Professor of Classics at Dartmouth College, shared his recent experiences publishing books in Open Access formats.

Feel free to share with any and all!

For background, Open Access is a movement that seeks to make all scholarship freely available on the web. Traditional publications, such as journals and monographs, bear a cost that limits access to the information they contain to those who can afford it. For example, the cost of subscriptions to academic journals has increasingly become a burden academic libraries have struggled to bear; a cost they have to pay even though their institutions underwrite the research that went into the journals. If you’re interested in talking more about Open Access, please contact David Wedaman or John Unsworth, or see the LTS Open Access website.

Easier internet access when visiting other universities

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LTS now offers eduroam, a service that makes it easier for community members to access wireless networks at other colleges and universities. When you visit nearly 100 other colleges and universities, eduroam lets you easily access their wireless networks using your Brandeis account. No advance permission or special registration is needed. For more information about using eduroam, please visit the LTS website.

eduroam-logo

Eduroam promises to save time and headache for community members visiting other universities to pursue research and teaching collaborations or participate in other activities. For help using eduroam, please contact the LTS Technology Help Desk.

Eduroam is available to members of the Brandeis community visiting such institutions as Boston College, Brown University, Georgetown University, and others. A full and growing list of participating institutions is available.

Sustaining departmental computer classrooms

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Fine Arts Media Lab

Fine Arts Media Lab, located in Goldman-Schwartz Art Studios

Although LTS provides computer classrooms and public computing labs in the library, many academic departments also maintain computer classrooms and labs tailored for the needs of their undergraduate and graduate students.  In fact, there are over twenty such classrooms and labs on campus!  Classes are regularly taught in these spaces, they’re often heavily used, and they serve a critical academic function.  But because most of them have no regular funding and no skilled staff to maintain them, their aging computers generally fail to serve departmental needs and are frequently in disrepair when needed most.

To address this need on campus, LTS launched an ongoing program to ensure regular renewal of departmental computer classrooms and labs.  Every year, this program focuses on a handful of spaces, providing new computers and software.  Once a classroom or lab has been updated, LTS will begin performing ongoing maintenance and providing prompt help for community members when needed.

In early January, LTS staff renewed the Fine Arts Media Lab, located in the Goldman Schwartz Art Studios.  This classroom, used for courses that focus on photography and other kinds of digital media, features fifteen powerful computers with Adobe’s media production software as well as other kinds of media editing software.

Sociology computer lab

Sociology computer lab, located in Pearlman Hall

In late January, LTS staff renewed the Sociology computer lab, located in Pearlman Hall.  This space, used as a breakout room by Sociology courses and a study space by the department’s graduate students, features five computers with software for media production, geospatial analysis, and qualitative analysis.

In future years, we plan to improve additional classrooms and labs across campus.  Spaces in Physics, Philosophy, Music, Chemistry, English, and elsewhere are planned for renewal in fiscal years 2014 – 2017.  For more information about this program, please contact Jay Chen.

Welcome our new librarian

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Photo - Patrick GamsbyMeet Patrick Gamsby, who joined the Public Services department as Academic Outreach Librarian for the Humanities in mid January. Patrick joins his Humanities counterpart, Judy Pinnolis, in delivering services and devising engagement to several Humanities departments and programs. The constituencies to which Patrick is assigned include English, Philosophy, History of Ideas, Comparative Literature, Romance Studies, and European Cultural Studies. He will also coordinate the First Year Library Instruction Program (FLIPs) integration with the University Writing Seminar. Patrick holds a PhD in Human Studies; this and his language and research skills will bring great strength to his work supporting these activities.

Patrick comes to us from Duke, where he was Data Curator in the Provost’s office. Prior, he was Scholarly Communications Intern in Duke’s Perkins Library, and in past has been a Teaching and Research Assistant for the Department of Philosophy at Laurentian University and a Research Assistant in Environmental Studies at York University. Patrick received his PhD in 2012, his Masters in Environmental Studies in 2007, and his Master of Library and Information Science in 2006.

Like his peer outreach librarians, Patrick will participate in a broad range of activities in support of teaching, learning, and research at Brandeis. This includes understanding discipline-specific curricular needs and coordinating use of library and technology services in support of them, understanding research practice and learning culture of departments in order to develop appropriate programs and outreach, providing instruction that incorporates information and technology fluency, selecting resources and evaluating collections, and providing research assistance that engages scholars at every stage of their careers.

For Patrick, librarianship is a family affair. Patrick’s wife is Science Librarian at Wellesley College. Please find contact information for Patrick and all LTS subject liaisons at: http://lts.brandeis.edu/research/staff.html