Canisius College

Library Losing Two Long-Time Staff Members
Karen E. Bordonaro, PhD has taken a position at Brock University as information literacy services/instruction coordinator. Karen started at the Andrew L. Bouwhuis Library in 1986 as a reference librarian. In 2002, she was promoted to associate director for archives, special collections, and information literacy. Karen excelled in all these areas. She started successful new information literacy initiatives and established a digital archives collection. Karen never lost her touch as a superb reference librarian. In 2004 she earned a doctorate at the University of Buffalo.  Karen has indeed had a very distinguished career at Canisius College. Congratulations, Karen!

Sally DiCarlo is retiring in December from her position as interlibrary loan technician at the library after 23 years of service to the college. Sally helped out many faculty and students in their research by obtaining books and journal articles from all over the United States and Canada. Her service and her smile will be greatly missed. Congratulations, Sally!

For Blackboard Users
Blackboard checklist and FAQ has been updated on the ITS Web pages to reflect the important dates for the spring 2006 semester.  In general, faculty who have used Blackboard for the fall and/or intend to use it for the spring will want to remember the following:

• Make your Fall 2005 courses Unavailable
• Make your Spring 2006 courses Available
• Request to have multiple sections and/or cross-listed sections combined
• Streamline the list of courses in “My Courses”

The checklist and the instructions for these features can be found here.
    
For questions about Blackboard, contact Estelle Siener at Ext. 2443 or Joe Rizzo at Ext 2455 in the FaCTS Center (CT-003).

Blackboard Tip:  Edit your “My Courses” list
Is the list of courses on your Blackboard Welcome page getting long?  Veteran Blackboard users will remember that you can rename a course with “ZZ” in the title so that it will sort to the bottom of your list.  However, the newer version of Blackboard offers an even easier solution:

1.  Click the pencil icon on the My Courses title bar:
How?  Once you login to Blackboard, look at the blue title bar labeled My Courses. At the right-hand end of this bar is a pencil icon. Click on it to get to the Customize My Courses page.

2.  Uncheck courses that you want to hide:
How?   All your courses are listed on the Customize My Courses page.  If there is a check mark in the Display Course column, the course is showing.  Uncheck any course that you want to hide.  Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Submit.

Personal Laser Printers
In the past, ITS has advised college computer users to purchase inkjet printers as a personal printing solution. The main reason for this is the low initial price -- typically under a hundred dollars. In the long term, however, the high cost of inkjet printer supplies and the lower reliability and lifespan of the printers themselves can become a liability.

ITS is now promoting personal laser printers from Hewlett-Packard instead of inkjet models. These are compatible with both Windows and Macintosh computers and are significantly more reliable and less expensive to operate over the long term.   There are attractively priced HP printers for individual use, small department shared use, and large department shared use.  If you have any questions about this information or would like to hear more about using a laser printer as a personal printing solution, please call Tom Prince at Ext. 2445.

Do you have questions, comments, or suggestions for articles you would like to see published in the LIS News?  Please let us know: lis_comments@canisius.edu