Presentations

To learn more about the presenters, please visit our Speaker Profiles page.

Even Canada's first free public library (established 1883) cannot rest on its laurels…Since 2007, the Board of Commissioners of the Saint John Free Public Library in NB has been fully engaged in a strategic planning exercise to move its library forward. The library's vision statement, "Our past, Our present, Our future - Our Library!" reflects the library's mission: to be a vibrant hub of activity integral to an engaged community, working to build on the foundation of our past, to innovate for our present, and to explore our future. This session will provide participants with a library trustee's perspective on the value of strategic planning as a way to move a library forward. Participants will be walked through the library's strategic planning process, including the many challenges faced along the way, the lessons learned, its many accomplishments, and future goals.

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By carefully studying how students conduct their academic lives (think "Gorillas in the Mist"), an academic library can better design its services, physical space, online resources and teaching efforts in order to have a better impact on students' academic work. Inspired by recently published ethnographic student studies, the speaker set out to gather data on the student population served by Dalhousie University's Killam Library; in particular, their research and learning habits, online search patterns, and their study/work behaviours in the library's physical spaces. Through a serendipitous partnership with a Sociology faculty member, the speaker worked with a group of fourth-year Sociology and Social Anthropology students to conduct four student studies during the 2009-10 academic year: participant observation of Killam Library study space, library website focus groups, interview-surveys regarding students' research/learning behaviours, and a computer workstation survey regarding laptop use in the library. This session will highlight some of the findings of each of these studies and will be helpful to anyone interested in socio-ethnographic approaches to studying patrons in any kind of library.

UPEI's Robertson Library team is developing a framework for storing, managing, and displaying documents and research data using a combination of Drupal and Fedora, a homegrown Drupal module called Islandora to connect the two, along with other open-source packages.

Presenters will demonstrate this framework in action, including a traditional IR, faculty research projects, and various library and community digitization projects. Details regarding the technology and infrastructure used to implement and support this platform will be included.

The first "Perceptions of libraries" report was published by OCLC in 2005. This report to the OCLC membership summarized findings of an international study on information-seeking habits and preferences. The study was conducted to help us learn more about: library use; awareness and use of library electronic resources and Internet search engines; use of free vs. for-fee information; and the "Library" brand. Once it was published, numerous elements became of tremendous value for library planning. Five years later, OCLC felt it was time to survey the landscape once more to see how these perceptions had evolved in light of our ever changing environment. Similar purposes are again explored such as look at users' awareness, usage and perceptions of electronic resources, trust of libraries, awareness of resources, patrons' perceptions of the library, but new elements are introduced in this report and they will be shared during the session.

Maps have always been used to show 'the edge' or 'borders' of an area. What's on the other side? Is it really greener over there? When it comes to offering services from the Map Room, where are these boundaries? What services do we offer? What services should we offer? We help people find answers or resources to help them with their spatial or geographical needs. What does this mean? Traditionally, it has meant ensuring access to paper maps and providing reference services to help users with some degree of geographic knowledge interpret the world around them. However, with the increasing availability of Geographic Information System software and web-mapping tools such as Google Earth, Google Maps and related products, are Map Librarians and staff really needed? Yes they are and Danial Duda and David Mercer from the Memorial Libraries Map Room will discuss why.

Everything has a geography. Regularly, we encounter people that think on very different levels, some a little more spatially than others. While some research projects lend themselves quite naturally to spatial analysis, for others the geography is there but a little less obvious. Map Room personnel take every opportunity to encourage researchers to think about the geographical/spatial perspectives of their project. The Map Room itself has geography considering the notion of "library as place". Its location and configuration makes the Map Room a desirable venue host talks, lectures, and seminars of all sorts, which of course, provides the perfect opportunity to pull related maps and materials from the collection to augment the presentation. Space and place - the Map Room staff are there to help you with your geographical queries.

Obtaining user feedback is valuable yet often overlooked, so when Memorial University launched OCLC's WorldCat Local discovery tool for Fall 2010, conducting usability testing only made sense. Two branches, each with distinct user groups, the Ferriss Hodgett Library in Corner Brook, and the Health Sciences Library in St. John's, conducted unique usability studies to gain evidence into how WorldCat Local performed common research tasks.

The Health Sciences Library was inspired by the information seeking habits of Memorial's Faculty of Medicine, School of Nursing, and School of Pharmacy. In particular, their heavy reliance on journal literature, and known item searching makes these users a great test group.

The Ferriss Hodgett Library, serving an undergraduate liberal arts and sciences population, was interested in the information seeking behavior of new students with little to no experience using library resources.

At the local level, evidence obtained via this usability testing will provide guidance into the future of the tool at Memorial. On a broader scale, attend this session if your library is contemplating the shift to a new discovery tool, or if your library has already done so.

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The book publishing market has reached a point whereby many books are available in either print or electronic format. Libraries are confronted with a challenge - should a library buy books for its collection in print or electronic format? A recent quantitative study of use at Memorial's Health Sciences Library shows growing use of electronic texts, yet also shows stable use of print texts. Thus, the library is in need of evidence-based qualitative research that can be used to shape collections policy.

Replicating a survey from another institution, researchers at the Health Sciences Library conducted a web-based survey of all Memorial faculty, staff, and students, with three aims: To discover 1) if members of the university community are receptive to electronic books; 2) if they know we already have electronic books; and 3) how they actually use electronic books. This information will be used to shape collections policy, guide the development of instruction programmes, and direct promotional efforts.

Once upon a time a young science librarian volunteered to serve as music librarian, a field he knew very little about. "How hard can it be?" thought the young librarian arrogantly. Very hard, as it turns out! This session, presented in the form of a fairy tale, will tell the story of what happened next. Participants will come away with a sense of some of the unique challenges in music librarianship, some of the basics that one should know before jumping in, who to turn to for help and more generally, how these lessons could apply to any new subject responsibility.

Fall 2010 saw Science & Engineering Liaison Librarians surveying a well known underserved user group at Memorial University Libraries, science and engineering graduate students. We were interested in assessing their preparedness for researching the primary literature, their needs in terms of past and ongoing library instruction and the tools they use and where they may require additional support. We found that there are no simple answers to what we thought were simple questions and that there are numerous opportunities for flexible teaching approaches across all of the disciplines of science & engineering. Participants in this session will come away with ideas on assessing underserved user groups, tips on survey design and insight into the continually evolving role of science liaison librarian in the academic literacy of their campus communities.

Modern academic libraries are diligently buying electronic journals, evaluating electronic books, digitizing special collections, collecting electronic research output, and spawning any number of new metadata schemas to provide better access to online resources. As we migrate our collections onto the web the unique characteristics of digital information generate immense opportunity for innovation in service delivery, and for new kinds of partnerships with faculty. Digital Humanities, or Humanities Computing, is one area with potential to reinvigorate the relationship of the library and one of its core user groups.

Digital Humanities is an area of interdisciplinary inquiry that attempts to find and communicate new meaning by applying computer processing to traditional humanities sources. Some of the technologies in the Digital Humanities toolbox include text mining, visualization, clustering, natural language processing, and image analysis. In order to provide data that is usable in this context libraries will have to grapple with new questions about scale, navigation, and exchange.

Come to this session for a gentle introduction to the aims and methods of the Digital Humanities, and a discussion of the ways in which libraries can not only support these emerging interests, but also partner with researchers to actively co-create new information resources.

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Canadian cataloguers are getting ready to jump to a new content standard, along with our counterparts in countries around the world. What is the plan for implementing RDA in Canada, and what are your options? This session will review the major changes to bibliographic descriptions for electronic resources, and bring you up to date on Canada*s training and implementation plans.

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In almost every library setting librarians encounter difficulties of translating information from one form of communication to that of the person trying to access resources. Examples of such situations are: researching a topic for a person who is hard of hearing, teaching English resources to French users, introducing immigrants to a different library culture, or teaching someone who is computer illiterate how to access electronic resources. Each situation is an example of a language barrier: someone wanting access to information not available in their primary method of communication. In each case, librarians find ways to bridge the language barrier and close the gap between clients and resources.

In this session, participants are invited to share their stories and exchange solutions to take back to their home libraries. After a presentation on the topic, the participants will be divided into groups where there will be a list of questions to discuss and then share the common characteristics with the rest of the groups. Through this knowledge exchange, the participants will discover ways to evolve their services and learn methods to extend access to communities on the other side of the language barrier.

Research over the past two decades has amply demonstrated the importance of literature to the formation of both regional and national cultural identity, particularly in the face of mass market globalization of children's book publishing in the 21st century as well as the predominance of non-Canadian content from television, movies, books, magazines and internet media. However, Canadian children appear to have only very limited exposure to Canadian authors and illustrators. In Atlantic Canada, regional Atlantic Canadian authors and illustrators for children receive very limited critical attention, and resources for the study and teaching of Atlantic Canadian children's literature are few. Print and digital information sources on regional children's books, publishing, authors and illustrators are scattered and inconsistent in quality and currency.

This presentation addresses these key concerns by describing our SSHRC-funded research project which documents and analyzes the current state of regional literature for children and young adults in Atlantic Canada, and describes the process of creating an authoritative website devoted to contemporary Atlantic Canadian literature for children and teens. This website includes a comprehensive annotated bibliography of primary texts, author and illustrator profiles, and videotaped interviews with selected authors and illustrators.

This presentation describes the process of creating this website and includes a demonstration of the site itself.

Do you know who the mayor of your library is? What are people saying when they check-in to your location? This session will provide an introduction to location aware social networking games such as FourSquare and how you can use the games to market your library and enhance your services. Location aware games are apps on a smartphone that let you share information about where you are (basically). FourSquare lets you "check-in" to a location so your "friends" know where you are and where you have been. It lets you give tips about the place and upload pictures. As the "owner" of a location you can setup incentives for checking-in. For example, coffee shops would say, if you check-in 7 times in a week you get a free coffee. I'll give a demonstration of how the games work and what some libraries are doing with the games and what the potential is for public and academic libraries and learning spaces. What problems can these games solve or are they just fun?

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Are iPads a game changer or an expensive new toy? After years of ebook reader hype, it is tempting to dismiss the iPad as just another device. With the introduction of iPads south of the border several months before Canada, we can look across the border for early results. Many faculty in higher education have adopted the devices and school districts are jumping-in. This session will be a survey of results from the early adopters, experiences from the University of New Brunswick Saint John campus, and give some practical advice and challenges to librarians. Do your database subscriptions, newspapers and ebook packages allow your patrons to use the iPad version of the content? How do you help people find and evaluate apps (which are really another form of information)? How long will your school or university still use paper textbooks? Who will design a decent "catalogue" for apps?

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The use of online tutorials in academic libraries has exploded in recent years. As a costly and time-consuming venture, each library must determine if developing their own online tutorials will meet user needs. Similarly, the type of tutorial and software chosen is institution specific and there is no template that works for every library.

Partnering with a variety of organizations or even other libraries can facilitate the process in an academic library setting. With the time and resources involved in creating quality tutorials, collaboration is the most effective vehicle for promoting library services and teaching research skills.

As part of a larger goal to promote information literacy, the Ryerson University Library has been exploring the benefits of collaboration in developing tutorials. Efforts to partner with various organizations have taken us to various university departments and even outside the university. Our tutorials are a work in progress and we remain committed to exploring partnerships that will provide extended access to library services, especially to our distance and continuing education students.

Often seen by academic librarians as a difficult connection to make, collaborating with faculty to deliver library services is instrumental in reaching students. Through various committees at Ryerson, we have been able to promote library services to faculty in a unique way. The desired result is a strong faculty-library relationship that will mean a better research experience for our users.

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Join a lively, interactive presentation of library services for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. An overview of recent early literacy research and highlights of some developmentally-appropriate, community-focused programming will help you fine-tune a service strategy that is the best practice for your community's youngest members.

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In today's economy, faced with increased pressure to reduce costs, library book vendors and publishers are more receptive to the idea that just-in-time (JIT) materials management could be beneficial to their bottom-line. JIT is a management philosophy that focuses on the production and inventory system ensuring that supplies arrive just as they are needed. JIT enables companies to save money and time because they don't have to pay for storage space or manage as much inventory. Consequently the mounting pressure on publishers' margins and the increasing adoption of JIT concepts as ways to reduce costs has resulted in new selection and acquisition models being pushed into the librarian's work processes, specifically collection management and development processes. These models are enshrined in new concepts such as "patron driven acquisition", or "print-on-demand services". For librarians the question remains, is JIT the right prescription to the effective building and maintaining of library collections, i.e., does JIT enable lean and efficient collection development processes? This paper explores the theory behind collection development in general, relating this to the changes and underlying attitudes in the currently evolving business models, specifically the role of patrons and collection development librarians in academic libraries. The recently launched patron-driven acquisitions program test at the Dalhousie University Killam Library is also discussed as a case study informing the paper. The vendor perspective to the setting up of the PDA program, specifically the partnership between YBP and EBL, is provided by Heather Berringer, Director of Canadian Sales at YBP.

Will the digital content you create today be accessible and usable in 10 years? The session will provide attendees with an overview of the key components of a best practices digital preservation management strategy which will insure, to the extent possible, long-term access to our valuable digital collections. Topics covered will include OAIS (a reference model for an Open Archival Information System) and the processes, procedures and tools associated with the PLANETS (Presevation and Long-term Access Through Network Services) Project. The lessons learned are the outcome of attending a variety of European workshops and conferences dealing specifically with digital preservation management issues over the past year. The session content will be enhanced by a live demonstration of Archivematica, a state-of-the-art digital preservation workflow based on curation micro-services. The workshop content is applicable to any digital repository software including Portfolio, Hyperion, CONTENTdm, DSpace, Eprints, Fedora, etc.

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How can you better serve the adult populace? More and more people expect more service from their local Public Libraries. What can you do to meet that demand? There is a wide range of program options available for adults. Rita Roberts and I will be outlining the 5 W's (Who, What, When, Where Why) and the Big H (How) of programming in Public Libraries. Small libraries, small spaces and small budgets are no obstacle to us. No money, no time - no problem. Imagination and a little creativity can go a long way. It has worked for us and can for you too! We have lots of examples from the St John's Libraries from the last year or so and will share success stories and lessons learned. Presentation will be 30-45minutes and 15 minutes for idea sharing and discussion

In a time of crises, public libraries need to be flexible, adaptable and accommodating. Nothing demonstrated this more than the 9/11 tragedy when almost 6000 stranded passengers flooded into Central Newfoundland for 6 days. Libraries in Gander, Glenwood, Gambo and Lewisporte offered a safe haven for hundreds of frightened and traumatized people from all over the world. As well as providing an extended, extraordinary level of access and service, the library staff quickly took on new roles as "Walmart Greeters", "Grief Counsellors", Comforters and " Super Librarian Listeners". And that phrase we put in job descriptions, "All other related duties" took on a whole new meaning that week. Why not come and learn how public libraries can indeed rise to any occasion and take a leadership role providing first class public library service under any circumstances?

An archivist extends the Library's boundaries and teams up with faculty to excite researchers by inserting another element of discovery in the research process. Knowing that the Archives may be considered intimidating to researchers, collaboration within the more familiar library system and information literacy structure is an excellent way to challenge researchers to think beyond the Library's collections. Over the past few years, an archivist at Acadia University has been successfully delivering assignment-based information literacy classes to students in Sociology, Education, Theology, and History courses. In addition to working directly with classes, the archivist builds literacy tools on LibGuides. Aimed at both students and the larger community, these LibGuides highlight parts of the collection and invite researchers to learn more. Through interactive discussion and a guided exercise, this session will demonstrate how the collaborative process works at Acadia University. This session is also an opportunity to critique the methods used in delivering these services and assess their effectiveness. Not only are the borders of information literacy being blurred, the archivist is shaping a new concept of outreach. Consider opening up the possibilities of collaborating with an archives and "erasing the edge".

MUN Libraries began circulating eBook readers on the Grenfell Campus in 2010, as part of a pilot project examining whether eReaders improve user access to and satisfaction with eTexts; which type of eReader works best for academic library users; and how compatible they are with the library's existing eText collections. Users who borrowed eReaders participated in an online survey about their experience. Learn about the challenges and considerations academic libraries should be aware of before implementing a similar initiative, and find out what users really think about eBook readers.

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The act of identifying people who appear in visual material is a basic requirement in video and photograph description. In order to connect digital library users to material that features a particular person, identified people are listed in a visual object's metadata. This task is often accomplished through the use of on-screen captions or credits, but it can be problematic when those visual identifiers are not present. The person carrying out the description is left to their own devices to either track down the identity of the unknown person or leave the person unidentified. In the latter scenario, a user's attempt to collocate all material in which their target appears will be left unfulfilled.

A possible solution to the problem outlined above is the use of facial recognition technology. Using video material from Memorial University of Newfoundland's Digital Archive Initiative (DAI), research was carried out testing the efficacy of facial recognition technology in commercial photo software. The question at stake in this research was: "If someone appearing in visual material is not identified in any other way, can facial recognition help identify that person?"

This paper will discuss facial recognition technology and how it was leveraged to try to identify people appearing in visual digital library material more consistently. It will discuss the process used in carrying out the research and will attempt to judge whether the reward of improved identification is worth the time and effort expended. Other possible applications of facial recognition technology as it relates to libraries and digital libraries will also be considered.

This paper presents the results of a research project that examined if, where, what, and why, Faculty at Acadia University - a small, primarily undergraduate institution - publish in open-access locations. The excellent response rate (52%) of the 229 Faculty who were surveyed, the data from the focus group, and 10 interviewees provide the rich detail necessary to describe the considerable impact of open access publishing. The results were astonishing given that the university does not yet have a digital repository. So where, and why, are Faculty posting copies of their works? Are these research or teaching materials or both? This session is for you if you have ever wondered: what percentage of Faculty have made some of their work open access, what kinds of work they have made open access, how often they adhere to their copyright contracts, and what they do - or don't do - to retain their rights.

Has access to online journals and other digital resources changed the way students find and use materials? It has indeed! Are they digging deeper? Definitely!

This session will report on a longitudinal (1995-2008) bibliometric study of 457 Master's theses and Ph.D. dissertations in three disciplines (History, Psychology, and Education). Citation analysis of almost 44,000 cited resources shows changes in students' research practices over time, challenging earlier studies and pessimistic musings about students' declining research habits in the digital age. With online access, students are making greater use of both journals and monographs with a wider range of publication years. As UNB Libraries have acquired JSTOR and other electronic back-files of journals, we can track students' increased use of journal articles with higher citation ages. Most students are also using monograph material with increased citation ages through the period of this study. Our students seem to be rediscovering more than only older journal articles, which may be a serendipitous benefit of acquiring electronic journal archives. The study found differences in journal and monograph use within the humanities, social sciences and professional programs, and areas where the web has made an impact in dissertation and thesis preparation. All disciplines in this study seem to have been invigorated by their access to electronic resources. The value of citation analysis in informing Reference, Instruction and Collections Development practices will also be discussed.

This paper examines how library users access, use, and interact with two social discovery systems used in the Edmonton and Halifax public library systems. Transaction log analysis is used to answer the following research questions: (a) How do public library users interact with the enhanced catalogue features of these systems?, and (b) How does usage between the two social discovery systems compare? Four months' worth of data were compiled from the social discovery systems used by Halifax (AquaBrowser) and Edmonton (BiblioCommons). In addition, 50 records were tracked weekly to examine what user-generated metadata were assigned to them. Results suggest that while BiblioCommons, in particular, shows promising results with respect to user-generated lists (e.g., I own this), most social features are noticeably underused. The tracking of the 50 records in both systems shows little use of user-assigned tags, ratings, and reviews. Since the implementation and maintenance of social discovery systems is costly, it is important for library management to make informed decisions about which system features are the most cost effective and how these features may be better tailored to meet user needs. Future research will thus focus on clients' motivations for engaging with the social features of social discovery systems, and their perceptions of, and satisfaction with, the benefits of these features.

As new academic librarians, discovering the importance of building one-on-one relationships with faculty was an eye-opening experience. Throughout graduate school, person-to-person interactions were consistently emphasized in respect to Reference Desk interactions, but rarely in other contexts. Of particular interest to these new librarians has been the usefulness of establishing and maintaining contact with faculty beyond the walls of the Library. In terms of getting students to use and recognize the value of library services, faculty are extremely influential, and librarians stand to gain tremendously when they are perceived as essential research allies. This paper will discuss the various strategies that the librarians at StFX have implemented over the last few years to foster such relationships with faculty. Furthermore, the presenters will discuss their own experiences as new librarians in building these relationships, and will engage those in attendance on the topic of promoting librarians as research allies.