2010-02-09

CASLIS Award for Special Librarianship in Canada

Dear Colleagues,

The deadline for nominations for the CASLIS Award for Special Librarianship in Canada is approaching quickly, on Sunday, February 28th. Please take the time to nominate someone you have seen make a significant contribution to our profession.

About the Award:

Awarded annually since 1979, the award is intended to recognize and reward those who have made an outstanding contribution to special librarianship in Canada through professional and/or Divisional activities.

Award Criteria:
Appropriate professional activities may include research, publishing, teaching, or significant participation in other related professional associations, while examples of Divisional activities include participation in activities benefiting CASLIS or CLA, leadership within CASLIS or CLA, or other noteworthy actions on behalf of CASLIS or CLA. Candidates must be members in good standing in CLA and have actively participated in the Association or Division.

Nominate a Colleague today:

  • Nominations for the CASLIS Award for Special Librarianship in Canada must be accompanied by a supporting statement that outlines his/her professional career and the specific achievement(s) that merit granting of this award.
  • Signatures of at least two CLA members must also support any nomination.
  • All nominations and deliberations related to this award shall be considered confidential.
The award will be presented at the CASLIS Annual General Meeting, held during the CLA conference.

The closing date for nominations is February 28, 2010.

Send nomination letters to:

Kimberly Silk, MLS
Data Librarian, Martin Prosperity Institute
101 College Street, Suite 420
Toronto ON  M5G 1L7
Kimberly.Silk@martinprosperity.org
Office: 416-673-8586
Mobile: 416-721-8955

2010-02-05

CLA-CASLIS Ottawa Event: Customer Service Skills 101

Please join us for a panel presentation about customer service and communicating the value of library service. Panelists will discuss what management needs to do to create an environment in which good customer service is the norm, the training, policies and performance appraisals that support customer service, customer service standards and communicating the value of library service using a Value Proposition approach.


Speakers:
Margaret Sampson, Manager, Library Services,  Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario
Yvonne Van Lith, Coordinator, Sunnyside Branch, Ottawa Public Library
Sonia Bebbington, Manager, Library Client Services, Department of Finance Canada

When: Wednesday February 17, 2010 from 1:00-3:00 p.m.

Where:
Ottawa Public Library Main Branch, Meeting room, lower level
120 Metcalfe St. Ottawa, ON K1P 5M2

Register by sending your name and membership/student status to: rsvp@caslisottawa.on.ca.  If you require a receipt for this event please include a request with your RSVP before February 16, 2010.

Cost:

CLA members: $20
Non-members: $30
CLA student members: $10
Student non-members: $15
New Professionals (those working in the field for less than two years): $15
Members of other professional associations (SLA, OALT, etc.): $25

2010-01-27

Happy Family Literacy Day!

Family Literacy Day takes place every year on January 27. ABC CANADA Literacy Foundation and Honda Canada created the day in 1999 to encourage families to read and learn together. Thousands of Canadians take part in Family Literacy Day events and activities at schools, libraries and literacy organizations.

2010-01-25

Ottawa Public Library acknowledged for digital inclusion programs

When Ottawa made the short list for the 2010 intelligent communities of the year award at the annual conference of the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) on January 20, the Ottawa Public Library’s (OPL) digital inclusion programs were singled out as actively using broadband and information technology to excel in today’s global economy.

“This international recognition confirms the important role that the Ottawa Public Library plays in the education of our future community leaders,” says Councillor Jan Harder, OPL Board Chair. Ottawa was commended for its commitment to using information technology for education that helps young people prepare for knowledge-based careers in the community.

OPL offers a dynamic array of digital products and services to its patrons. It has seen consistent, year-over-year increases in visits to its web site, which numbered more than five million in 2008. And in 2009, electronic database usage was up nearly 20 per cent over the previous year.

BiblioCommons, the new catalogue introduced in 2009, is an example of constant technical and usability enhancements to ensure that information is accessible in a way that keeps users engaged. The new catalogue is easier to use, has greater search relevancy and provides social networking tools so that people can share information and interests.

In 2009, circulation of digital media such as audio books, e-books, and music increased by 90 per cent over 2008. Patrons can download these items from the OPL web site and many of the holdings may be transferred to a personal listening device such as an iPod or iPhone so that users can learn on the go.

High-speed wireless Internet access was first piloted at the Ottawa Public Library in 2007. Since 2008, it has been available in all 33 branches of the OPL. Users enjoy online connectivity in OPL branches that allows them a place, other than school or home, to continue studying, working and living online. Laptop computers, smartphones, or any other electronic devices that support the technology are often seen on study tables in OPL branches, right next to a stack of reference books.

Free Internet access has been available to OPL cardholders at in-branch computer terminals since 1996, and high-speed Internet access since 2001 at every branch across the city. OPL also offers an array of software applications on close to 400 public access workstations. In 2008, public Internet access workstations at the OPL were used nearly one million times.

OPL has a wide variety of databases available for students to use online, 24 hours a day. Peer-reviewed, academic journals and trade magazines for subjects ranging from science to sociology are available all OPL cardholders. Even if the library is not open, these databases are never closed.

For patrons who need help using a personal computer, OPL offers formalized computer and Internet training courses. In 2008, the Ottawa Public Library held nearly 400 computer-training sessions aimed at teaching older adults and newcomers how to use a personal computer. More than 1,500 people attended these sessions.

OPL also provides assistive technology to eliminate or diminish barriers to information and maximize user independence such as

  • Assistive technology workstations with large character keyboard, trackball, mouse, scanner, height-adjustable desk, shared printer and a variety of assistive technology programs such as Kurzwell 1000 and 3000, JAWS, Dragon Naturally Speaking and J-Say.
  • Wheelchair accessible workstations at wheelchair accessible branches
  • ZoomText to magnify and read the text on a computer screen
  • StickyKeys – a computer feature for people who have difficulty holding down two or more keys at a time
OPL is using technology to help knowledge workers and leaders of tomorrow open up new horizons. The wide range of online opportunities and digital items available to students at OPL is one of the reasons Ottawa is known as a connected community. The way people learn has changed and OPL is changing with them by offering new ways to discover the world while providing trusted and professional assistance, as always.

ICF singled out Ottawa for its relentless focus on education and start-ups. One of the top seven will be announced as the Intelligent Community of the Year on May 21, 2010 at ICF’s Broadband Economy Summit. The Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) proposed Ottawa for the competition, which this year focused on school-work connections in the “education last mile”.

For more information about the ICF, visit their website at http://www.intelligentcommunity.org/.

For more information on OCRI, visit their website at www.ocri.ca.

Source: http://www.biblioottawalibrary.ca/explore/about/mediaroom/media_e.cfm?id=227&sub=News%20Releases

2010-01-16

The Ryerson Review of Journalism has an article about the changing role of news librarians in Canada.

Google hasn’t made newspapers research librarians redundant. In fact, they’re as busy as ever, even if they rarely receive the recognition they deserve.
Some quotes:
News librarians provide the information that journalists sometimes can’t get due to tight schedules and less proficient research skills. Hammer says librarians can do research in half the time it takes her to do it. "They tend to know a few more tricks." With the advent of online content, librarians have had to become "Jacks-of-all-trades," taking on new jobs they never did years ago. With so much information now available to reporters, it’s up to researchers to train them to be more self-sufficient.

If used correctly, though, librarians can be more cost-effective, says Michael McCaffrey, a reference professor at the University of Toronto. More often than not, a highly trained and skilled researcher will find information more efficiently than a less research-savvy journalist, without racking up big bucks for unnecessary searches. Plus, it frees up more time for journalists to do what they do best.

Slides for We can count’em … but do they count? Challenges in assessing ROI from information services

Some people have gotten in touch with CLA-CASLIS Ottawa wondering about the slides from the Oct 27th presentation on ROI. We've been given permission to post these decks here for your viewing.



The 4 C’s of “Kewl”

Proving Value, Building Relationships
We Can Count Them - But Do They Count?

2010-01-12

RESCHEDULED: Bootstrapping your Library Web-site with Drupal, an Open Source Content Management System

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the January 21st session Bootstrapping… has been rescheduled to March 11th. Our most sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused. We will be sending out a new notice regarding the session towards the end of February.



Thank you for your understanding.



Join us for a panel presentation about using the open-source content management system Drupal as a back-end for your library website and library applications.

Panelists will provide an overview of Drupal: what it is; pros and cons; features and benefits. They will share their experiences throughout the development stages, including how to plan and design a Drupal site, out-of-the box vs. custom built applications, modules created for and used by libraries, and more.

Panel members are from academic and special libraries and will provide attendees with a realistic understanding of how people from diverse backgrounds with different requirements can approach Drupal.

The session incorporates interactive components for demonstrations and step-by-step instruction. Refreshments will be provided.

Speakers:

  • Dave Kisly, Web Developer
  • Ron Jerome, National Research Council of Canada
  • Anthony Petryk, Carleton University

When: March 11, more details to follow
Where: Ottawa Public Library Main Branch, 120 Metcalfe St. Ottawa, ON K1P 5M2

Register by sending your name and membership/student status to: rsvp@caslisottawa.on.ca.

Cost:
  • CLA members: $20
  • Non-members: $30
  • CLA student members: $10
  • Student non-members: $15
  • New Professionals (those working in the field for less than two years): $15
  • Members of other professional associations (SLA, OALT, etc.): $25

Speaker Biographies:

Dave Kisly is currently working with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network on IT and web-related projects, serving as the technical lead in the migration of the organization's website to a more flexible platform, and in the concurrent development of two associated Drupal modules to manage and provide membership access to licensing information and contact information.

Dave has also contributed to a number of other Drupal library projects, including SFU's "Multicultural Canada" website; the AlouetteCanada project; several historical and research-oriented websites and applications hosted by UPEI Library; the "Manitobia" site (a historical site involving U. Manitoba, U. Winnipeg); as lead developer / application architect in the OpenILL project (U. Winnipeg and other partner libraries); and as a former Project Coordinator and as a "on-call" developer w/ the BC Electronic Library Network. More recent and ongoing projects involve web application development with the Canadian Human Rights Reporter, the National Aboriginal Health Organization, and Down Syndrome International, among others.

Dave holds an M.L.I.S., in addition to degrees in Anthropology (M.A.) and Psychology (B.A.).

Ron Jerome is a senior programmer/analyst with the National Research Council Canada. Since 1981, Ron has used his training in Mechanical Engineering to take on many different roles at the NRC, from the design and use of equipment and data acquisition systems related to ice research in the high arctic, to his present role as manager of a High Performance Computing (HPC) and Visualization facility used to model materials and processes that produce cleaner power such as fuel cells and the next generation of batteries.

Throughout his career, one of Ron’s central interests has been computer and networking technologies and has been a proponent of Open Source Software (OSS) and WWW related technologies since the early 90’s. Ron’s HPC facility runs almost completely on OSS, from the Operating System (CentOS), the Parallel Distributed File System (Lustre), the job queuing system (GridEngine) to the modeling code (OpenFOAM) and of course, uses the Drupal content management system for web access.

Ron is the author of the Biblio and OAI-PMH modules for Drupal which were originally created for internal use, but were contributed back to the OSS community almost 4 years ago and have continued to grow and thrive ever since. There are currently an estimated 1500 installations of the Biblio module world wide, some containing 10’s of thousands of records.

Anthony Petryk is the Web Initiatives Librarian at Carleton University Library, where he is currently managing the redesign of the Library website in Drupal. Previously he worked at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library as the Virtual Services Librarian. He earned both his B.Sc. and MLIS from McGill University.

2009-12-23

Happy Holidays!