One does not simply walk into an RDC

It’s that time of year when more and more students are asking about accessing datasets for their research through our local Research Data Centre. And a couple times now, I’ve found myself having to...

Making Things Happen and Getting Things Done

This post has been a long time in the making. Several weeks ago, my fellow librarian and friend, Meg Ecclestone, wrote about maintaining subject expertise in LIS. This is a good topic to discuss in...

New positions, new titles, new roles

Happy Spring! We’re almost there, people, I promise. I’m beginning this post with that statement since it recalls an entry I wrote last year about taking on a limited term appointment as Wilfrid...

Unprecedented $3 million dollar lawsuit filed against McMaster librarian for blogpost

Reblogged from Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians: It's rare to be sued for expressing your opinion on a blog but that's exactly what seems to be happening to a librarian at...

Thoughts on CARL’s Research Data Management Course

Last month, I attended CARL’s 4-day course on Research Data Management Services in Toronto. (Jargon alert: CARL is the Canadian Association of Research Libraries). This was an intensive week of...

Thoughts on CARL’s Research Data Managment Course

Last month, I attended CARL’s 4-day course on Research Data Management Services in Toronto. (Jargon alert: CARL is the Canadian Association of Research Libraries). This was an intensive week of...

OLA 2013 Poster Presentations: Doubling Down on Online Teaching and Learning

Are you going to The 2013 OLA SuperConference? Are you going to be there on Thursday, January 31? If so, then come say Hi! while my colleague, Pauline Dewan, and I present our poster at lunch. Last...

Reflecting on 2012

2012 has come and gone, and it’s been quite a year. If you’ve been following along on this blog or elsewhere, then you probably know that my theme for these past twelve months has been “Planes,...

Link: Measuring a library’s holdings based on its “uniqueness”

Here’s a Monday morning link for all y’all. Dan Cohen notes an interesting way to measure a library’s holdings : by evaluating the collection’s “uniqueness.” This may be an interesting metric that...

Discussion on off-site storage academic libraries

Link Sharing: This page links to a newspaper article on the potential impact of offsite storage for items with low circulation numbers in a province-wide academic library consortium. Check it out...

LISPOP/Ipsos Reid polling data at Wilfrid Laurier University goes public; scholarly users can access it in many formats via ODESI.

Link: LISPOP/Ipsos Reid polling data at Wilfrid Laurier University goes public; scholarly users can access it in many formats via ODESI. Possibly Related posts: Discussing data.gc.ca, Nesstar, and...

Thoughts on The Globe and Mail’s Paywall Announcement

Here are some quick thoughts on The Globe and Mail’s announcement that it will create a paywall around their online content on October 22, 2012. On the one hand, I’m okay with this. Creators ought...

Information Literacy, Census Geography, and Maps

One of the things I’m constantly doing as a government documents librarian is giving lessons on Statistics Canada geographic areas. Census geographies can be downright confusing to the new user...

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In My Tabs July 22/2012 : LAC-BAC, Wikipedia, and Being The Man

I’ve decided to start listing some of the links I keep open in my tabs over the week. As for the title of the post: that’s an idea I blatantly stole from an old friend, Jhameia Goh. (Jaymee, hats...

Adapting to a changed world

A funny thing happened while Mark Lamster was writing about how libraries are more popular than ever for Metropolis Magazine. Well, two funny things happened. First, he didn’t really give enough...

Tumblred.

Every now and again I check out my Tumblr account and then: BAM! I get why people use Tumblr:http://steeleworthy.tumblr.com/post/22265321301/emo-national-digest-libraries-taken-withThanks, @ghardin.

Halifax population changes, 2006 to 2011

A few years ago, I designed a few rudimentary Google maps of Halifax from StatCan data. This was before I really knew anything about stats and data (n.b. I still don’t think I know much more than...

Food for thought: important links on StatCan and longitudinal surveys in Canada

This week, Statistics Canada publicly announced the cancellation of the longitudinal portion of the Survey of Labour Income Dynamics (SLID). If you look at this issue of The Daily, in the very last...

Discussing data.gc.ca, Nesstar, and Open Data in Canada with Tony Clement

On Friday, June 8th, 2012, I had the opportunity to discuss Open Data and Open Government with Tony Clement, the President of the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS), as well as other MPs and members...

Budget cuts to libraries, archives, and information centres jeopardize access to Canadian government information

This has not been a good spring for Canadian librarians and archivists, especially those who work at federal libraries and archives, which are being de-funded and dismantled by federal budget cuts....

An Online Instruction manifesto: technological challenges and people-driven solutions

Recently, I’ve joined a small project at my place of work that is considering our online instructional goals and our ability to meet them. The project isn’t large or groundbreaking: it’s an...

The Circumlocution Office

Happy Spring! Although I don’t post so often to my LIS site at the moment since I’ve recently drawn some of my time to creative writing pursuits, I do have some news to share, and this space is as...

Why we must be apprehensive about DRM and digital locks

This little piece of news hasn’t yet got much coverage in the popular press, but it should. It shows why Canadians (and everyone, really) must be concerned about digital locks. Librarians and...