Tag Archives: academic experience

Making students care about IL: Mission Impossible?

*A cross-posting from the Re:Generations blog*

With the Winter semester in full-force, I’ve been doing the usual information-literacy tour. We usually show students some key library resources, give them a little virtual tour of our LibGuides, and then hone in on a few tools and resources we think are going to be useful for their work in that class. This isn’t a perfect model for teaching, but it seems to hold the attention of most of the class, and then often have a question or two. Continue reading

Sing it, Robbie Williams! (A post about Millennium)

Recently I figured out one of the most empowering things on my office computer. I know you’re thinking the same thing: usage statistics reports. I KNOW.

Perhaps you, like me, are not on the cataloguing side of things because perhaps you, like me, didn’t do so well in Intro to Cataloguing class and swore off cataloguing forever. If this is the case, and you do collections development, I would encourage you to befriend your Friendly Neighbourhood Cataloguing Librarian and ask about getting some usage statistics reports generated for your perusal. Those Cataloguing people — they really know things. Things that I know nothing about. How did I actually go to school with these people? It’s like they have a different degree than me.

My library uses Millennium as their ILS — hence the blog title  – but maybe your library uses a different product (there’s a nice list of ILS products here). I have been forced to learn several modules within Millennium and I have to say: It’s really quite a nice program. Bravo, Innovative Interfaces. I must admit to having wasted an entire afternoon playing around with the module that generates reports. It is FUN! And INSIGHTFUL.

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Sunny days, ohhh, sunny, sunny, sunny days…

Man, is it ever IMPOSSIBLE for me to post on this blog during the summer months. I did a bunch of stuff — went to CLA, attended the FIAA AGM, moved to Ottawa, started a new job — but didn’t bother reporting on anything here. It’s almost like hot sunny weather is not conducive to sitting inside on a computer. Huh.

Aaaanyway, Ottawa is great so far! I’m moved into a little sunny apartment that’s about a 15 minute walk from work — joyous, since York was about an hour by transit. It’s really interesting to observe how different things can be from one university library system to the next. Particularly with regard to organizational structure and budgeting decisions during what has become a verrrry difficult time financially for Ontario’s universities. It sucks to go through budget cuts, but it’s an interesting lesson for a newbie.

My job tasks remain quite similar, but of course I’m still on an enormous learning curve. It’s going to stay interesting for sure, but will probably not be nearly as terrifying as last year, when I knew nothing. One year under your belt makes a huge difference (Librarians with 25+ years — you can chuckle now. Go ahead — chuckle away at my naivety).

That’s about all I can report on so far… Lots of introductory stuff last week and getting signed-up for the right stuff (workshops, collections platforms, French classes…).

I don’t know when I’ll be reporting back… Perhaps we can say that I’m going to go on a small hiatus until the new school year? It’s difficult to find blogging time when there are so many patios to go sit on. I’m sure you understand.

YouTube: More than just cats.

Sometimes people put videos on YouTube that are so divine, and so delightfully brilliant, that they merit some honourable mention. No, I’m not talking about that video of the kid who just got back from the dentist. Or the ninja cat.

I’m talking about videos created by academic educators — librarians among them — that explain really complex scholarly concepts in clear and succinct 5 minute (or so) videos. They’re from a variety of places, and have a variety of approaches, but the common thread is that they are amazing teaching tools. Watching them has actually made me a better instructional librarian, and I even played one in a class I taught because I though the creators did such a fantastic job of relaying key information literacy concepts.

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Ninging

Brief note:

As a part of my Re:Generations work, I’m trying to get content created for the Canadian Academic Libraries Network, which is sponsored by CACUL (Canadian Association of College and University Libraries). It’s supported by this program called Ning, which is actually sort of a cool way to display your webpages, integrate things like blogs, events, announcements, etc. into a nicely formatted interface, and create a virtual space for communities. Communities such as Canadian academic librarians.

Anyway, we’ve been working away at this little corner of the interwebs, seeing if it fits the needs of CACUL, and when I went to visit the homepage today, there was a whole bunch of new activity! People have begun joining and creating their own little groups. Yay! It’s warms the cockles of my heart when things like this get buy-in. If you’re interested in this type of stuff, check it out!

Video Killed the Radio Star.

Adobe CaptivateI get to make some Adobe Captivate videos at work and it is fun! I feel like Steven Spielberg. I sit in my office with my headphones on, murmuring, “Highlight Box goes her to underscore the name of the webpage.” And people look through the doorway and think I’m doing complex technical things. I’ve switched my office chair to a director’s chair and have taken to wearing a beret. The students mock me, but I think they’re just jealous of my genius?!

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O.A., eh oh.

As I’ve mentioned before, I was Managing Editor of the Faculty of Information Quarterly at school, but in my new capacity as an academic library, I serve on the York University Libraries’ Scholarly Communications Committee. All of a sudden, instead of just complaining about the inherent evil of journal vendors, I actually have to learn about tangible issues! Ah crap!Journals

One of the movements sweeping the world of academic publishing is the Open Access movement. I didn’t realllly get it until I attended some sessions on the topic at the CLA Annual Conference. And then had to explain it to non-librarians (the true test of knowledge).

I had to sum up my job to parents, and in doing so, found myself explaining in the simplest terms possible, the whole “Open Access” movement. I told them this:

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CLA! Yay yay yay! Gooooo librarians!

I just got back from the CLA Annual Conference and Trade Show 2009 in Montreal. What a busy weekend!

The CLA conference was held at the Palaise de Congress in Montreal.

The CLA Conference was held here, at the Palaise de Congress in Montreal. Colourful!

Bruce Harpham and I presented at the poster session. Our topic – near and dear to my heart – evaluated students’ perceptions of professional development opportunities at the Faculty of Information. We looked at whether students were successful in securing employment during the summer between first and second year, and whether their career aspirations changed throughout their MISt degree. It was a great experience to follow from a research problem and design, right through to synthesis and presentation of results.

"Hello, welcome to our poster! Please, take a handout!"

"Hello, welcome to our poster! Please, take a handout!"

I went to a full roster of sessions pertaining to all sorts of cool stuff – Joseph Janes being hilarious about the future of libraries, Mount St. Vincent developing a credit-course on Information Literacy, a video-game developed to teach students about academic integrity, and how copyright is ruining everyone’s lives and destroying the whole world – delightful, fascinating topics!

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TRY Conference 2009

I attended the TRY Conference last week (The fifth annual conference of the Toronto, Ryerson aTRY Logond York University Libraries, which takes place each year at St. Mike’s college at the University of Toronto). The conference’s theme, “New Directions” sought to illustrate the ways in the roles of libraries, library staff, and the delivery of information are changing within and beyond the university library and the academic community which it serves. It was the first year Faculty of Information students were invited to participate – it’s a great networking opportunities for budding librarians and I gained lots of insight about my new career. Continue reading

I’m back!… And I presented at a conference!

housing-memory-posterI have been on temporary hiatus from this poor, neglected blog throughout the past semester. This is because I have been so busy at school, that all I want to do when I come home at night is: 1) Eat a delicious dinner, and 2) Allow my tired brain to be washed over with the mindlessness of prime-time television. Glorious, glorious television!

One interesting project that kept me busy was a presentation for the Housing Memory Student Conference, at the Faculty of Information. This conference was organized by two incredible students, Ania and Monica, who single-handedly organized the event, complete with 24 panelists, a brilliant keynote from information science superstar, Geoffrey Bowker (you can listen to the podcast of his presentation from the iSchool Podcast website here), and a roundtable with a whole bunch of really smart people, who discussed, “memory and its architectural manifestation in archives, libraries, museums, information systems and material and digital artifacts.” Can you IMAGINE doing all that while going to school full-time and working? Good lord.

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