Library & Information Technology Services Blog

Every year, Douglass Day is held on February 14^th by the Colored Conventions Project to celebrate the life of Fredrick Douglass. By collectively transcribing online collections of historical documents, attendees will make Black history and culture more accessible to the public.

This year’s Douglass Day celebration will be focused on the life of Mary Ann Shad Cary, a teacher, lawyer, abolitionist, and first black woman publisher in North America. This event will include transcription sessions through Zooniverse and live speeches and performances on the Douglass Day YouTube channel.

The BMC local Douglass Day event is organized by LITS and the Tri-Co Libraries with support from Sisterhood*. It will be held in Canaday 315 and remotely over Zoom from 12:00-3:00pm EST on February 14^th, 2023.There will be refreshments, baked goods from Sweet T’s Bakery, and event swag. We recommend participants bring their own devices however you will also be able to use desktop computers. Parallel events will also be held at Haverford and Swarthmore for those who want to patriciate at either location.

For more information and to register for the event, check out:

Email –  amcgrath1@brynmawr.edu, kggonzalez@brynmawr.edu
Event Registration – https://brynmawr.libcal.com/event/10250359
Website- https://douglassday.org/
Livestream – bit.ly/douglass-day
Twitter- @DouglassDayorg

LITS has received reports of Panopto failing to run on certain College Macs due to using an outdated version of macOS. All versions of macOS 10.15 and older were considered unsupported as of September 2022.

As of today (January 18th, 2023), LITS has pushed a command to all devices running macOS 10.15 and older. This command will automatically download a macOS update that community members should install at their earliest availability.

LITS will be contacting individual users of any College device running macOS 10.15 and older via our ticketing system — so be on the lookout for an email from notify@teamdynamixapp.com! Don’t hesitate to send any questions or concerns to the Help Desk at help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.

To check your current macOS version:

1. In the top-left corner of your desktop, click the Apple icon
2. Click About This Mac
3. Your macOS version will be listed with a name and version number

To install any pending Apple updates:

1. Plug in your device to a power source
2. In the top-left corner of your desktop, click the Apple icon
3. Click About This Mac
4. Click Software Update
5. Click Update Now or Upgrade Now

Beginning Tuesday, January 17, community members will no longer be able to email print jobs Canon printers. This service will be disabled due to a change in Microsoft’s underlying infrastructure.

LITS plans to upgrade our print server software over spring break, which we anticipate will allow us to re-instate the print-by-email service. We will share more information about the upgrade and any necessary downtime soon.

For more information on printing:

• https://askathena.brynmawr.edu/help/public-printers
• https://askathena.brynmawr.edu/help/departmental-printers

Contact the Help Desk with questions: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.

LITS is extending laptop and media equipment loan times and eliminating daily overdue fines for them! Laptops and multimedia equipment will now check out for 1 week at a time, up from 4 days. To keep laptops and equipment circulating and available, overdue items in this category will only have a two-day grace period after the due date before being billed for replacement costs. (Replacement costs will be waived automatically upon return of overdue items.)

Additionally, all remaining overdue fees for laptops and equipment will be waived  from patron accounts by March 31, 2023.

Please contact the Help Desk with any questions: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440

We recently discovered a configuration error that caused Panopto to archive recordings too early. Normally recordings are only archived if they haven’t been viewed in three years. Recently this error caused Panopto to archive recordings created and viewed as recently as a few months ago.

NO CONTENT HAS BEEN LOST. Panopto’s archiving process only puts recordings into a kind of “cold storage” state: you can still see them, but you must “restore” or unarchive them in order to view or edit them, and the restoration can take up to two days.

We have fixed the error that caused the problem and are working with Panopto to find a way to globally restore all recordings that should be available (i.e., everything but recordings that have not been viewed in the past three years). In the meantime, we thank you for your patience and ask that you please manually “restore” or unarchive recordings you need.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Help Desk (610-526-7440, help@brynmawr.edu).

Please be aware of a recent attempt to gather login, password, and other secure personal or College data from Bryn Mawr College community members.

Be on the lookout for messages in which a community member sends you a file share. A recent example is “Kim Cassidy” sharing a file called “Assessments”. This type of scam occurs regularly and could come from any account and have any file name.

Do not open the attachment, click on links, or respond in any way. Delete the message or report it as Phishing in Outlook. If you believe you’ve given your information to a phisher, immediately change your password and contact the Help Desk: help@brynmawr.edu, 610-526-7440.

If you’re not expecting someone to email you a file, you should be cautious and question why you received it.

• Learn how to recognize scams by completing the Information Security Education Program
• More information: Malware and spam: Phishing emails

Contact the Help Desk with questions: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.

Emailed to the Academic Community list 1/4/23:

To place a book or video on reserve, please fill out the book reserve and/or video reserve form for the library you wish your reserves to be in, located in the LITS service catalog: https://td.brynmawr.edu/TDClient/Requests/ServiceDet?ID=279 Please note that you must submit a request in order for an item to go on reserve for your course. 

The library will accept requests for required course texts and videos from faculty, and you will have the option to indicate a preference for either digital or physical formats. For physical books, we will obtain one copy per 20 students enrolled in the course. Please note that while we will make every effort to acquire items in the requested format, not all titles are available as e-books and not all e-books are available for library use. If you request an e-book and we cannot acquire it, we will acquire a print copy of the book.  

Please include all e-books in your request even if you already see them in Tripod. We “rent” and do not “own” many of the e-book titles in Tripod, and books we don’t own sometimes disappear without warning. Unless we purchase the book (as an e-book or in print), we can’t guarantee it will be available for the entire semester. Similarly, if you have previously used library streaming video in your course, please submit the request again, or email Arleen Zimmerle (azimmerl@brynmawr.edu) to check that the videos are still licensed. Many of our video streaming resources are obtained on a limited time basis.  

Your subject librarian would be happy to advise on resources for your courses (https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/offices-services/library-information-technology-services/lits-staff/subject-librarians) 

All reserve requests are processed in the order in which they are received. All items will be kept on reserve until the end of the semester, unless otherwise requested. Please note that if the Library needs to purchase or recall an item, it may take time to arrive. 

Contact circulation@brynmawr.edu with questions.