Funny how two weekends ago when I first saw the flyer for Our Public Library I nearly rolled my eyes thinking, “our libraries don’t need rescuing….” But I soon learned how wrong I was as I got wind of all the hullabaloo at Toronto City Council regarding the KPMG report.

It is good that Mayor Rob Ford is following his word but I wonder if people understood what the “gravy” was they were committing to being cut when voting him in. I can imagine people thinking administrative or other such things being cut, not services that are vibrant and well used, like bike lanes and libraries.

The public consultation/core service review that came out showed that public libraries are eighth on list of what citizens view as necessary for the city, and fourth on list of services people think the municipality should provide. That right there should be a big hint to the Mayor and his councillors on how people feel about their libraries, but I guess not!

A friend posted on Facebook that she supports Ford and “you can’t blame Ford for Libraries being shut down .. blame the internet…. Kindle, iPad, etc”. To her, and the rest of you out there, the library is not about books anymore! It hasn’t been for decades! WAKE UP!  Ok that last bit wasn’t for her – but for you out there that hasn’t set foot in a library in years. Get out and go to one, spend an hour there and then go to a different one – they’re not all the same and you won’t “get” TPL if you only visit one branch.

Sure libraries are still the #1 place to go for book culture, but they’re more about people and information now hence all the computers, wifi and virtual reference; the TPL has probably close to a hundred databases with access to thousands of articles, stuff that is not on Google and is great not just for students, but people doing job searches, personal projects and hobbies, starting a business and so on.

The thing about libraries too is that there is less and less public space (or it’s being commercialized) and so they do often serve as role of community centre; I’d be okay with merging more of those, as long as there’s no pool near the library .  Have you looked at all the programming TPL offers? I just wish I was a kid again. Sure, some of the programming may be seen as “gravy”, but newcomer programs, career searches, and computer training are essentials.

Finally, libraries used to be places for only the elite & upper class, whereas now it’s nearly the opposite and a place for the poor, working classes, and new immigrants but those groups typically don’t speak out or up for themselves. This may be the very reason we’re in this situation – who elected Ford in anyhow? And even if those who use libraries voted for him, some people just don’t know any better (cuts DO sound good after-all).

So, if you live or work in the GTA, please take a moment and visit http://ourpubliclibrary.to/ to sign the petition and spread the word. We can do a lot better than 26,441 signatures!

Because of such popularity, it is important to acknowledge the downfalls of the infographic as well. David McCandless gave a great Ted Talk on data visualization (that was screened at TedXLibrarian): David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization. In it he points out how scale and reference points are key to truly grasping all the information that is being shown.

Recently the Torontoist also had an article that discussed the problem with infographics. In this case the Toronto City budget was shown in pie graphs, a couple of the charts side by side yet one measuring in billions the other in millions. Our Toronto‘s Graphics skew city budget info (Torontoist, July 6).

In a few of the workshops I’ve given to classes the last couple of semesters, I have asked students to look up and view an infographic and then answer a couple of questions. In this case I used a database we subscribe to called Opposing Viewpoints in Context and the topic I have the students search is childhood obesity. The database has a map of the U.S. that shows rates of obesity for select years both by rate and number. Students have to know that they can’t just rely on the colour of the state to find out which one had the highest obesity rate in 2008; they have to hover over the state to read the exact percentage (FYI it’s Virginia with 19%). Sometimes it’s just good to clue them in that information does come in all sorts of formats and media, and that when they think about research they don’t have to think just in terms of books!

The missing link? We know that Margaret Scott (AGD) did undergraduate studies at U of T, we do not know if the Librarian Margaret Scott did.

If you can help us, leave a comment or @ me on Twitter!

The below is an email response, thoughtfully and carefully written (that’s appreciated), by my MP’s office from an email based on Canada Causes Cancer initiative.

I think this editorial from the Canadian Medical Association Journal (2008, Oct 21 179.9)sums up my ideas in response: “Canada defends chrysotile on the basis that it is safer than other forms of asbestos. But to say that chrysotile is safer is not to say it is safe. ^”

It’s up to you to decide if Chryostile is as safe as other hazardous materials or not and if it’s right that we’ll export it willy nilly but have really strict use of it here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Jennifer,

Thank you for taking the time to write.

It is important first to clarify how we use the term “asbestos.” A great deal of confusion arises from the common use of the generic commercial term “asbestos” to describe two different and distinct classes of mineral fibres found naturally in rock formations around the world: amphibole and serpentine.

Chrysotile, the only “asbestos” fibre produced in and exported from Canada, belong to the serpentine class. Serpentine minerals are structurally and chemically different from the amphiboles. Chrysotile is the only “asbestos” fibre that does not belong to the amphibole group. The risk posed by using chrysotile fibres can be managed if adequate controls, such as those established in Canada, are implemented and completely observed.

For over 30 years, the Government of Canada has promoted the safe and controlled use of chyrsotile, both domestically and internationally. Scientific reviews show that chyrsotile fibres can be used safely under controlled conditions.

Canada has adopted a controlled use approach to chrysotile asbestos that enforces appropriate regulations, programs and practices to rigorously control exposure. Where exposures and subsequent risks cannot be properly managed, the specific uses are discontinued or prohibited.

The illnesses we are currently seeing are linked to past high-level exposures and to inappropriate uses that have been discontinued since the late 1970`s.

The Chyrsotile Institute, a not-for-profit organization, is mandated by the federal and Quebec governments, as well as by the unions representing chyrsotile workers, to promote the safe and controlled use of chyrsotile domestically and internationally. This includes information such as technical regulations, control measures, standards, and best practices.

Thank you for writing,
Best Regards,
Jane Ng
Constituency Assistant,
Office of Chungsen Leung, M.P. – Willowdale
Parliamentary Secretary for Multiculutralism

 The theme of the exhibit was “Oh Canada” for which they selected pieces from 18 different Canadian designers. Some new, some old.

I stopped by the exhibit one lunch hour because I just had to look at the dresses that had displayed. There were garments from the 6os, 70s, 80s, 90s and more recent.

You can imagine that the pieces from the 80s were as hilarious as you might suspect. I remember one dazzling dress by Wayne Clark with the broad shoulders as was so common then and could imagine how it really would’ve looked great in that time. There were a few designers that did not tingle my fashion taste buds, such as Marilyn Brooks’ flamenco inspired dresses, but there were a few others that wowed me.

One designer I really enjoyed was Claire Haddad. Her silk hand painted dresses were such flowingly gorgeous pieces. I also loved one of the pieces by Vivienne Poy. In writing this I just discovered Poy is a Canadian Senator! You can see a part of one of her garments on the Seneca FRC site.  I also like Ruth Dukas’ dress and coat set as well as the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Paper dress the Fashion Resource Centre had out, similar to this one available on etsy right now for the low price of $600! I thought that dress was adorable, but apparently last November MarieClaire designated it as a “crazy fashion moment”.

Of all the designers on display, there were only a few names I recognized (such as Alfred Sung and Joe Mimran) so I really enjoyed the little exhibit that the students and staff of the Resource Centre put together. Hopefully they put on similar displays in the future!

Starting in a new position is a good time to reflect on one’s own teaching philosophy and what the aims of education are. In my opinion the two main aims of education are to transfer knowledge and to inspire critical and creative thinking. I feel that those goals should be the teacher’s objectives, but I also know that it is not easy to keep those goals in sight in some situations.

Of the basic teaching styles I think I follow the Personal Model approach though I would like to see myself more in facilitator role. I would rather help students find their own answers to solutions but I know that for many of them I need to first show them how to do it. For instance, I am not the type that would just hand over the car key’s to a new driver and say “go at it!” Rather, just like when I learned to drive, there was a classroom lecture followed by in-car driving supported by the driving coach. It’s the same thing in a (normal) classroom – some talk about issues or concerns followed by relevant and real examples with my support being ready when called upon.

Given the nature of my instruction I can understand why I also score high as a formal authority since one who teaches in that style is “concerned with the correct, acceptable, and standard ways to do things and with providing students with the structure they need to learn.” A lot of my work focuses on the ethical use of information and teaching students not just how to avoid plagiarism but why they should want to avoid it. It is also very easy to fall into a “this is how you do it” mode of thinking when teaching hot to use specific tools instead of staying open and letting students fidn their own way. it often feels easier to help the students by showing them exactly how, for example, to do a database search rather than explore more abstract concepts such as appropriate use or ethics of information.

Essentially sometimes I feel constrained or conflicted in my teaching style since there are concepts I would like to get across to students but often I think they just want to be shown the steps directly instead of figuring it out which makes me wonder then if I’m meeting the aim of education to inspire critical & creative thinking.

It’s always funny to me when I look back on where I’ve been and what I’ve done in terms of teaching and instruction since I never wanted to be a teacher.

As a young person, adults were always telling how smart I was and how I should be a teacher, but in my opinion 9and I’m sure many agree), being smart is not one of the top characteristics of a good teacher. In fact, sometimes being smart is a hindrance. Throughout my own education up until about second year of university, I found few courses challenging (excluding gym and art – I was horrible at those in high School). Since I did not have difficulties with much content, it was hard for me to explain to others how to understand the material when they asked.

Despite my disinterest in becoming a teacher, by third year of university I knew “teacher” was at the top of the list for possible professions of someone pursuing a double major in French and Classical Civilization. In order to get an idea of what it was about, I signed up for a volunteer internship program through the university. During this program I was able to work with a few teachers at both elementary and high school levels providing one-to-one tutoring, group tutoring, and general classroom assistance to students in English and French.

After my undergrad, I continued on in a Bachelor of Education program. The coursework was interesting, but after the first 3-week practicum session I knew teaching wasn’t for me. There’s nothing worse with a teacher who is supposed to be mentoring you who does not really help at all (but will gladly share with the janitor that she got a “bad one”).

One would think given this bad experience I’d stay away from teaching and instruction, but the following academic year I ended up in a polyvalente in a small town in Québec working as an English Language Assistant. The three days I spent learning about the types of work I would be doing was almost as insightful as the two months I had in the B.Ed program!

In this teaching situation I worked with students at all levels, secondary 1 through 5 (i.e. grades 7-11) on their English Language skills using a variety of activities, from having them write puppet plays, to listening to English Canadian music or watching films or just playing a game of musical vocabulary (like musical chairs). I also for one semester, taught a conversational English class for adult learners which gave me my first experience teaching that type of student.

By the time I was in graduate school, I didn’t so much think “I hate teaching” as, “I like doing instruction” but in my head I still separated instruction and teaching. I did take one grad course on instructional strategies for information professionals which included theories of pedagogy and also had the assignment where we had to video-tape ourselves teaching the class. I actually enjoyed preparing for that assignment and liked the opportunity to critique myself. Later on in my studies I was a TA for a class and got even more practice instructing lab sessions on research skills.

As a librarian, my first teaching experiences were typical one-shot deals. Professors would bring their students to a library lab and I’d have an hour, maybe two, to show them everything they need to know. I once used the verb “teach” in front of one professor and she quickly shot me down and said I did not teach but only provided instruction.

Librarians are generally discontent with the one-shot model. It’s just not the most effective way to teach (yes teach, not instruct) students research skills and information literacy competencies. So they’ve been working on different ways of tackling that from creating full courses on research to integrating it into the course curriculum.

For three semesters I taught a research course at a university. It was aimed primarily at students who were “at risk” (i.e. on probation for having a low GPA). It was an 8-week course that was a co-requisite for a regular semester course on general study skills (note-taking, time management, writing skills, etc.). It really was terrific having my own classes with my own students. It was nice to be able to follow a group of students over a period of time instead of maybe seeing them once. I enjoyed *teaching*! Working with such a course also gave me the opportunity to do some curriculum development which was challenging. The course I taught was revised each semester since the librarians involved were still trying to get things right – the right topics in the right order with the right activities.

So, while I was slow to learn how to teach well, and I still have a long, long way to go, I know that the way I think about instruction and teaching has changed and that I feel much more comfortable sharing knowledge with students. If only I knew back in teacher’s college, what I know now

I started with City of Bones which is the first in the Mortal Instruments series. This is a Young Adult novel in the paranormal or supernatural genre (I have no idea if there’s a proper category). The main character is Clary, a 15-year-old girl who lives alone with her mother. One night while out partying she sees people no one else can; the next day, stuff happens & then her mom gets kidnapped. I’m not going to go over the plot for you but the gist is that her mom is a (former) Shadowhunter (i.e. demon hunter) and Clary might be too. Turns out those invisible people she saw were Shadowhunters as well and they might be the ones who can help Clary get her mom back. Things get complicated.

There were a few things I liked about this book. One was the treatment of queerness. I.e. a couple of the minor characters are homosexual and it’s no big deal (well at least not for one of them or for some of the other characters). There is a discussion between a couple of characters on why another is not out, “what’s the big deal?” is essentially Clary’s point. Anyway, I liked how it’s not a big issue in the book but sort of just there like it is in our real lives.

The author is also pretty good at writing dialogue (a point of view shared by someone else I follow in Twitter who happened to be reading the book at the same time as me). The dialogue just fit and in particular Jace (one of the Shadowhunters helping Clary) has some excellent lines. Most of the main characters are teenagers, but that apparently was no hindrance to the author; my adult brain thought she really showed the different personalities of the teens. I definitely had a couple of moments when I thought “yeah, I know what *that* feels like”. Ah, flashbacks to high school (not that there were demons in school, well not literally anyhow). Of course, just like in high school though, I just wasn’t that into the romance bits. It wasn’t a turn off but it’s just not my favourite bit of the book. The ending felt a little weak too, but maybe that’s because it is just the first of a trilogy. If it was a stand alone novel, I would be annoyed since there are at least three issues unresolved that I want to know more about.

I will definitely continue the series though I am not in a huge rush to get to them. I may just wait until I can get a public library card and check them out.

Just a quick post tonight since I’ve told people that I’ll actually go out tonight. I’m getting to be famous about not following through on such claims (so much cozier staying home).

Anyway, today started with another workshop for ECE. Prof was so nice. She even offered to buy me a coffee but I had to run away because then I went to watch my office-mate give a workshop for a class on careers. She talked about things like directories, associations, employment agencies, job banks, and databases like career cruising. Looked good!

Then I ran off to catch the shuttle bus to go to a different campus but I didn’t know where the information booth was (and that’s where the website said the shuttle would be) and so I chose the completely wrong door to exit through. By the time I realized where the shuttle was, I saw it driving away. So then I looked up transit directions and took the bus instead. It took ~45 minutes but I still made my appointment in time.

It wasn’t so much an appointment but another workshop I was going to observe. The reference technician at that campus library was doing a library workshop for a Tourism class. I learned a lot about tourism resources and I also learned it doesn’t matter what you do some students aren’t going to pay attention. This reference technician has been doing these sessions for a long time so there was very little I could suggest to her for improvement other than maybe a handout for the hands-on portion.

After her class we chatted a bit, and then I just stuck around and used a spare computer to try and do some work. I primarily started to think about the projects I was assigned on Tuesday. I need to come up with an interesting topic to write about for the newsletter to faculty. I went through some of the old ones to see what they did. I also went back over Rochelle’s Project Management Series. Yeah, so Friday afternoon was a fair bit of reading and not much working.

That’s it for Library Day in the Life!

I started the day off with two workshops, back to back. I got on the wrong bus on the way to work so I was about 5 minutes late for the workshop. I did call the reference desk to tell the staff there to let the prof know, but I’m not sure the message was relayed. When I got to the library’s lab there was no prof. One student said that he went off to do his own work. Wow. I have never encountered this before and now twice in two weeks I have had professors just not show up for the library workshop with their class. I know I was a few minutes late, but that would’ve been even more reason for a professor to stick around. Anyway, the class still went fairly well.  They were a quiet, attentive group.

The second workshop today was for another section of the ECE course I’ve been teaching all week. It was the repeat prof from Tuesday – the one who is also a coordinator. It was another good session. This time for the activity, instead of handing out articles I found, we looked at the articles they had brought to class that most of them found via Google and discussed whether they were scholarly or not. Another thing about this class is that the stereotype was finally broken and there were a couple young men in the class! I love seeing people in non-traditional roles.

After the workshops, I went to my office for a couple of hours. I was called out to help one student who remembered me from a workshop I gave last week. He wanted help on finding information on “commercial infrastructure” for a Canadian company. Then, I worked primarily on the exercises that I used in my third workshop of the day. I wanted to create a third one, but figured I wouldn’t have time in the class to get the students to do it. This last workshop of the day was for a course that’s required by degree students in business programs. This year the libraries have rolled out its curriculum mapping project. That is, librarians here have looked at the entire curriculum for the degree programs and decided which common courses should receive a library workshop, what content and when. So, the students who just started in September should have 6 library workshops throughout their academic years here. Librarians hope that this cuts down on students either not ever seeing a librarian or hearing the same things over and over again. Being integrated with the curriculum means the students should get the info they need as they need it. Today’s class was a research course. I went over what a literature review was, had them go into an article database, and then showed them three other databases they could use for industry profiles and market research. I had the students complete a pre-library questionnaire so that I could understand what they already knew and hear what they wanted so that’s why I played down the article databases and tried to show the market research more. The students were a mix – some really not paying attention, others completing work from another class, but there were some who were also engaged and interested in learning more.

Back to my office for 30 minutes. Office-mate was there and she said she wished I mentioned her these last couple of posts We also chatted about the activity reports we both have to do for our manager. The manager sent us both different examples but that’s because I’m a librarian and office-mate is a library technician (though she’s also studying for her MLIS online). I took a short break to register for PodCamp Toronto. I turned to my coworker and asked if she was a geek. No really, I did. “Are you a geek?” When she replied affirmatively, I sent her the link to PodCamp as well. I’ve been to the Montreal one twice, so we’ll see how Toronto compares

Two people were sick today so I covered the reference desk from 4 to 5. It seems to me the Learning Centre kept sending students our way even when it was a Learning Centre question. I tried helping one student find out if there was any sort of English conversation club, but all the links were old/dead so I ended up just advising her to visit International Student Services. I helped another woman who was using the library for the first time look up a couple of books on autism. Another fellow wanted clarification on MLA and citing stuff he got from the web. It was tricky to help him though without concrete examples (he handed an assignment in last week) so I reviewed the MLA guide we have online and then told him to come back again when he’s actually working on his next assignment. I also looked up for him how to book an appointment with the Learning Centre (its online, which I didn’t know before).  One of my last patrons of the night greeted me with a jolly “Hi, Jennifer!” I recognized him from my morning workshop (and he reminded me he was in the workshop too). He wanted help finding a book for a title he had. Turns out it was a textbook which we keep on reserve so I told him how he’d go about borrowing it. Then my office mate took over as I was starting to help another patron look up his textbooks. And that was it!