We are pleased to announce that the web committee recently approved enabling Google+ and Blogger in Beloit College’s Google Apps for Education (GAE) environment. These applications are a welcome addition to Beloit's GAE environment, as we have already had requests from a number of faculty who wish to use them in their classes.  You should now see these applications as options on the list in the top-right-hand corner of the screen when you are logged into any of Beloit's GAE applications.

Data, data, data and training, training, training! These were the themes for the Jenzabar project team during the month of March as the group prepared for another data pass and another round of training.  Visit the Jenzbar Project website for a full project update.

Moodle Groups has mistakenly sent out an automated welcome message to all users. I did not send this to you. Please disregard this message and do not use the information contained in the message. The system authentication is set to use your Beloit username and password - the part of your email address before the "@" symbol and the same password as your email account. You should be able to login using your current username and password. I am working to determine why this occurred and ensure that it does not happen again. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.

EBSCOhost databases (Newspaper Source, Academic Search Premier, OmniFile, Art Full Text) are temporarily unavailable due to maintenance being performed by the database provider. We are assured that EBSCOhost engineers are working to restore access as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience!

BELCAT is currently unavailable while staff work to configure new services. Library staff is available to assist with discovery and borrowing of collection materials.  Please contact the Circulation desk (x2300), Reference desk (x2544) or Chat/IM 'Ask a Librarian' with any questions.

Moodle at Beloit College is changing for the better! Support for our current version of Moodle (1.9.x) will end in June. As a result we need to upgrade to the next version, 2.x. The current plan is to create a test instance this semester, test over the summer, and implement in Fall 2012

The team checked off  a major milestone in February/beginning of March by completing Training Trip 3. Training Trip 3 provided basic daily operations training and was a first introduction to Jenzabar EX for many outside of the project team.  Perhaps the biggest accomplishment of Training Trip 3 was the Financial Aid office going live with their new software, PowerFAIDS.  Jenzabar training continues the last two weeks in March.  For a full update, check out the Jenzabar Implementation Project website.

The Jenzabar project team remained hard at work during the month of January.  Jenzabar consultants completed the first pass of data from Datatel Colleague to Jenzabar EX and the project team has been tasked with reviewing this data for accuracy.  The next step is a three week long training trip starting on February 13th.  For a full project update, check out the Jenzabar Implementation Project website.

The Moodle Policy has recently been updated to reflect the addition of Moodle Groups. Please review it so that you are familiar with the changes.

We have received notification that Charter will be performing some fiber maintenance in Madison next week that will affect the college's Internet service on February 8 & 9 between the hours of 1:00am and 5:00am.

Do you use the task bar (the area to the right of the 'start button' in windows 7) for shortcuts to programs that you run frequently? If you have any shortcuts there, then this might help you.

As of Monday, January 30, all Wilson databases are now available exclusively on the EBSCOhost platform. All links to Art Full Text and Art Index Retrospective on the library’s website have been changed to point to these databases’ new home at EBSCOhost. Additionally, Academic Search Premier links will now direct users to an interface that simultaneously searches both Academic Search Premier and OmniFile Full Text Mega (all other OmniFile Full Text Mega links have been removed).