Vote Earth! March 22, 2009

With the goal of 1 billion people switching off their lights as part of a global vote, Vote Earth is a global call to action for every individual, every business and every community. A call to stand up and take control over the future of our planet.

Image created by Shepard Fairey for Earth Hour 2009.

When I read those words on the Earth Hour website, I can’t help but remember how different things were just a few short years ago. Back then, if I would have mentioned words like “climate change” in a conversation, it would have been solely within an academic context (did I mention that majored in Earth and Atmospheric Science).

If the topic did happen to enter into a conversation with friends outside of my degree program, we quickly moved on to discuss other things since climate change was just something for scientists to worry about or perhaps one of those “crazy” environmentalists – it didn’t really affect the lives of the average person, right?

Wow, look at how far we’ve come…

I think films like An Inconvenient Truth deserve a lot of the credit for getting worldwide attention about the issue of climate change within a societal context. Whether you remained a skeptic or not, at least people were finally talking. For the first time in a long while, the environment began to take its place at centre stage, spawning mainstream movements like Flick Off and Earth Hour.

Curious to know how much of a difference turning off your lights for an hour can really make?

On a local note, the City of Toronto’s website states:

In 2008, Toronto’s electricity demand dropped a whopping 8.7 per cent during Earth Hour when thousands of Toronto residents and businesses turned off their lights.

I can’t wait to see what will happen this year when we turn of the lights….

Hope to be there… March 18, 2009

As a follow up to my last posting, I thought I’d mention some of the upcoming conferences and festivals that have caught my eye.


ICSTI 2009 Conference Managing Data for Science


Soils for Sustainability – CSSS/CSA/CSAFM Joint Annual Conference


The Word on the Street – Book and Magazine Festival


Canadian Science Policy Conference 2009 – if anyone’s interested they have a call for volunteers.


Imagine Science Film Festival…I would have liked to have seen yesterday’s screening of Naturally Obsessed: the making of a scientist. 


As Caryn Shechtman mentions in her blog:

This film is a welcome reminder that, in training to become scientists, we are learning to think independently and tackle difficult problems but, most importantly, persevere. These skills are invaluable in any career path and reach far beyond the walls of the laboratory.

I think that the same could be said about science librarians  🙂

Get To The Conference Without Breaking The Bank March 11, 2009

Attending conferences are a wonderful way to stay connected with the current happenings in libraries and meet up with friends and past colleagues.  However, hefty registration fees can sometimes be a bit hard to swallow.

As I gaze on with envy at my colleague who is heading off to the ACRL Conference in Seattle, I decided to figure out how to get the big conference experience without shelling out the big $$.

1. Plan ahead and prioritize which conferences will give you the most bang for your buck. 

   To find out about what types of library conferences are out there, I recommend Marian Dworaczek at the University of Saskatchewan Library’s fairly comprehensive listing of library related conferences.




2. If you work in an academic library, chances are that you might have some professional development, education, travel funds, etc. at your disposal – use them! If you’re a student, look to see if there are any bursaries or student discounts available.




3. Check out the conference website or blog to find additional funding opportunities…sometimes if you present/convene a session or perform some other volunteer role, you can experience the conference at a reduced rate or even free on the day you help out.




4. Conferences come in all sizes and formats.  If you can’t attend in person, make it a virtual conference experience..keep checking back at conference websites and blogs for additional materials from sessions. If you weren’t able to make it to the conference or couldn’t attend a particular session, these materials can be very informative.

And remember, don’t think that the conference experience ends after the final reception when everyone heads home. Networking at its best is about building lasting relationships and communication channels.  Find ways to stay in touch, whether it be by exchanging e-mails, meeting up for social events, commenting on a blog…the key is to find a way to connect.

One of the sessions I attended at this year’s OLA Super Conference was “New Academic Librarians: Networking to Success“. As a follow up to this session, I gathered e-mail addresses from interested session participants who wanted to stay in touch.  From here, I also decided to create a group on LinkedIn to promote additional connections and discussions among new librarians. To date, I’m up to 14 members! Something so simple, yet now if I see a job posting at McMaster Libraries for example, I feel comfortable sending a message to someone who can give their opinion on the culture of that particular library and perhaps some tips that might make the difference when it comes to submitting an application. 

Build your own LibX edition March 2, 2009

I’d been hearing about LibX for a while but since my library didn’t have an edition for me to play with, it hadn’t really entered into my sphere of consciousness until this year at an OLA Super Conference session. Once I watched Tim Knight describe how it worked and saw how to create my own edition with relative ease, I was hooked.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with LibX, it’s a plugin for Firefox or Internet Explorer that provides direct library access from your browser. Editions for specific libraries can be built using an open source framework.

Since UoGH users use resources from both the University of Guelph Library and Humber Libraries, LibX helps group resources from one convenient access point.  I could immediately see how this plugin would be useful to help meet the research needs of staff, students and faculty.  While testing out my edition, I was also delighted to see how it helps facilitate collection development.  For example, say you are browsing along the Internet and come across a title that you think would be useful for the collection. With the plugin loaded, I can link directly to both of the Humber and Guelph’s library catalogues to see if we already have that item or something similar in our collection. At the request of a colleague,  I’ve also added a link to Amazon so she can select text from a website, right click the mouse and perform a search for the item right then and there.

There are currently 565 public LibX editions for academic and public libraries. The majority of these editions are affiliated with academic libraries in the United States.

The following Ontario universities have public LibX editions ready to be downloaded to your Internet browser of choice:

• York University
• Wilfred Laurier University
• University of Western Ontario
• University of Waterloo
• Trent University
• Ryerson University
• Queens University
• Lakehead University
• Laurentian University

Interestingly, Ontario college libraries do not seem to have jumped on the LibX bandwagon.  While their user communities may not have the same rigorous research needs as their university counterparts,  I believe that the plugin would still greatly improve the research experience of library staff, faculty and students at those institutions. Hmmm, I sense an opportunity for some eager new library professional to demonstrate some initiative….

Please note that the University of Guelph-Humber Library Edition that I created last month hasn’t been made public yet since I don’t want to annoy people with constant updates while my colleagues perform some more beta testing for me.  However, if you have a University of Guelph Central Login ID and would like to give me your comments on features you would like to see changed, feel free to download the UoGH Library Edition.

If you are thinking about building your own edition, but don’t think you have the necessary technical skills, don’t worry, you can copy another edition and use it as your starting point.  While building the University of Guelph-Humber Library edition, I explored many of the existing public editions to see what I liked and disliked about them. The abundance of help icons in the edition building also point out useful guidelines to follow if something doesn’t work with your edition.

For more information on the many wonderful features of LibX and to see how you can build your own library edition, I recommend taking a look at the LibX homepage.

Freedom To Read February 28, 2009

As Freedom to Read Week 2009 draws to an end, I think it worth reiterating some of the Freedom of Expression Committee’s message:

Freedom to read can never be taken for granted. Even in Canada, a free country by world standards, books and magazines are banned at the border. Books are removed from the shelves in Canadian libraries, schools and bookstores every day. Free speech on the Internet is under attack. Few of these stories make headlines, but they affect the right of Canadians to decide for themselves what they choose to read.

While I typically hear more about censorship issues in public library and school library/curriculum in the press, that is not to say that issues of intellectual freedom in academic libraries are not important.

A section of the Canadian Library Association’s somewhat vague Position Statement on Intellectual Freedom states:

It is the responsibility of libraries to guarantee and facilitate access to all expressions of knowledge and intellectual activity, including those which some elements of society may consider to be unconventional, unpopular or unacceptable. To this end, libraries shall acquire and make available the widest variety of materials.

In shaky economic times, where Canadian libraries have lower purchasing power and funds might be stretched a little thin, you might be faced with the decision of buying one book instead of two. Maybe it means that you are faced with the decision of canceling a subscription to a database/journal collection or limiting acquisitions to a single format instead of acquiring both print and electronic formats.

Hopefully, we’re all using some of the knowledge that we acquired on the job or in library school to make informed decisions. Ultimately, however, there is the distinct possibility that some of topics might not get as much coverage as they deserve.

Luckily we have agreements like Racer or other ILL policies that can help balance the mix when we come up short.

At the University of Guelph-Humber Library we’re in a particularly fortunate situation because our community not only has access to resources that we purchase for them, but they can use those of Humber Libraries and the University of Guelph Library (and ultimately University of Waterloo and Wilfread Laurier University as a result of the TUG partnership). With this impressive grouping of collections, our challenges seem to revolve more around facilitating this access since many users often seem overwhelmed or even unaware of what resources they have at their disposal. It is this ability to interact and make connections with the user community that initially and continues to attract me to the library profession.

Introduction to blogging February 25, 2009

While I am by no means new to the concept of blogging, up until now I would consider myself a passive member of the blogging scene. Basically, I have my various feeds delivered to me and I put out the occasional comment when something piques my interest.

For the past little while however, I have been throwing around the idea of creating my own blog. I have to admit that I was a bit timid about moving ahead with this plan. I started out with baby steps by creating a Twitter account in January but found that I still wanted another forum to express myself in greater detail.

I finally decided, as the old saying goes, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”.  I’ll never accomplish anything if I don’t put myself out there and take on a few risks every now and then.

Here are a few of the factors that finally helped precipitate my decision to blog:

1. The title of John Dupuis’ recent series of postings on professional blogging in his Confessions of a Science Librarian blog might say it all –

“If you don’t have a blog, you don’t have a resume.”

Definitely something to think about – especially since my current contract ends in a few months.

Read Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3.

Hopefully, blogging will not only help establish new contacts but add a new dimension to my existing professional networks and relationships.

2. This blog will help organize my thoughts on topics that interest me.  Now that I’m not writing papers for library school during my evenings, I find myself in need a place to express myself and share information that I’ve come across that others might find interesting.

3. I recently broke down and enabled wireless Internet in my apartment  so I can now connect the Internet and write blog posts from the comfort of my bed if I so desire.

I’m still not sure if I’m happy with the look of the template I chose but I figure I’ll fiddle around with the cosmetics when I have some more time this weekend. I also welcome any constructive comments or suggestions if you see some way that my blog could be improved.

On a final note, in order that people don’t get too annoyed sifting through different posts of me talking about myself, I’ve decided to religate some of that information to the additional pages listed on my blog rather than through the postings which I’ll use for more general discussions about events and other topics of interest.