This Month
| October 2006 |
| Sun |
Mon |
Tue |
Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
Sat |
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
14
|
|
15
|
16
|
17
|
18
|
19
|
20
|
21
|
|
22
|
23
|
24
|
25
|
26
|
27
|
28
|
|
29
|
30
|
31
|
|
Wednesday, October 25
And We're Back...
by
Jason
on Wed 25 Oct 2006 05:54 PM EDT
After a bit of a glitch (or a glit of a bitch if you're dyslexic), we're back. Got through to Customer Support at NetIdentity very quickly today and my good friend Gregory doubled my transfer limit per month from here on with no extra charge. Yay! To celebrate, let's blow some bandwidth by linking to a few photos (just kidding - I don't think linked Flickr images count since I'm not loading them directly from my site - I should've checked though)
Here is the grad photo we took at noon today of students who are finishing the MLIS program this semester...
(This photo helps make it hit home that I'm almost done the program. But what really made it hit home was when I was at Zellers last weekend to buy toilet paper and I was like "uhm, how much toilet paper do we need for two months?" TP's one of those things, like salt or paperclips or Jack Daniels, that you just use until it's gone then you buy more without much thought of how much that usage actually is or may be in the future. (I ended up buying 20 rolls by the way.))
Sunday, October 22
(Imagine a "Big Event Is Coming To Town" Commerical Voice) One Day Only! Tomorrow! Tomorrow! TOMORROW!
by
Jason
on Sun 22 Oct 2006 04:05 PM EDT
Monday, October 16
Art Slade and Maggie Wood at FIMS Next Monday
by
Jason
on Mon 16 Oct 2006 09:26 PM EDT
 Funny story. After my "Public Libraries in the Community" class today, my group met because we have to come up with a business plan proposal for a new "for fee" service for a library. We were sort of struggling to come up with an idea as most of us were thinking "libraries = free" (I love my group!)
Some ideas included charging for a tutoring service (that would be more advanced than the still-free homework club that most libraries have). Someone else proposed a business centre with faxing capabilities, computers with no time restrictions, telephones, etc. Stealing an idea directly from the Regina Public Library, I came up with the idea of implementing a full-scale film theatre as part of the library's services. None of the ideas were really grabbing us though.
But then our instructor came up and suggested a speaker series. Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that? 
(Meanwhile, I had 10 Lunch Bucket posters sitting in my backpack at that very moment!) Another bonus of this idea: since I planned (or helped plan) for a lot of speakers over the past 10 years, this assignment will be like second nature. Yay!
Monday, October 2
Librarians Who Read Minds
by
Jason
on Mon 02 Oct 2006 09:25 PM EDT
So we were doing our tour of the LPL today and I was formulating an updated "Things I Like/Don't Like About LPL" post in my head all afternoon. But then Linda introduced me to the Coordinator of Children's and Youth Services so I could give my spiel about about Art Slade coming to FIMS on Oct 23 at 12pm in NCB285.
"So anyhow, I was hoping that some of the LPL librarians could join us." "Oh, I knew about that already," she said. "Oh?" goes I, wracking my brain. "Did I send you something? Did someone tell you about it? Do you know about about my blog too?" "No, I was on Art's web site last week and he's got it listed in his upcoming appearances."
"Oh...cool."
How's that for synchronicity? Plus all of LPL's branches are closed on Mondays (which normally I'd list as a "don't like") so that might free up more librarians to come than would've been able to otherwise. Awesome!
Tuesday, September 19
GG Award Winner, Art Slade, Coming To FIMS - All Details Finalized!
by
Jason
on Tue 19 Sep 2006 07:26 PM EDT
Below is an e-mail I just sent out to the department's mailing list. I really *really* want a good crowd out for this event so I have a mission for you, faithful readers.
I want you to subtly (and not so subtly) do everything you can to make sure we have a standing room only crowd for this event! Talk it up to your classmates, remind your friends (sneak a note into their day planners), if necessary, frog-march them to NCB2985 on the day! This event isn't limited to FIMS students either so if you want to bring your local librarian, your child's teacher or your book club, go right ahead.
I've accepted "Oh, I forgot all about it" as an excuse for people missing Lunch Buckets in the past but Art's basically agreed to come two hours out of his way to visit FIMS so I want to have a jam-packed room to welcome him!
(Revealed: the secret techniques of the successful event organizer - beg, bribe and berate!  )--- Hi all,
We're having a very special guest speaker on October 23 that I'm
especially excited about so I really hope you can come out!
For those of you who are new to FIMS or don't know about it, I'd
like to tell you a bit about the Lunch Bucket Speaker Series. It's a
recurring event I initiated in January 2006 to bring authors, publishers
and others from the wider Canadian book industry to the FIMS community.
In the past nine months, we've had authors (including a recent FIMS grad
who has a book coming out - http://shelf-monkey.blogspot.com/), a local
literary publisher, the Executive Director of an international literacy
organization, a panel discussion of students who have worked in
libraries before coming to FIMS and more. With that said, this guest
speaker tops them all!
Who: Governor General's Award-Winning Author, Art Slade
(http://www.arthurslade.com/) along with local Young Adult Author,
Maggie Wood (http://www.maggielwood.com)
Time: 12 - 1pm
Date: Monday October 23
Location: NCB 285
* Books will be on sale at this event and this is a great chance to not
only meet and ask questions of two highly regarded authors but get
signed copies of their books.
E-mail me if you have any questions (jason@hammond.net). Otherwise, I
hope to see you there!
Jason
PS - Just to clarify, the Lunch Bucket series is not connected to the
Department's "Brown Bag" speaker series which focuses on presenting
faculty and student research. The only similiarity is that it too is a
great series whose events you should make every effort to attend as well!
Saturday, August 12
Why Do Boys Read? Heavy Metal!
by
Jason
on Sat 12 Aug 2006 09:06 PM EDT
GG winning author, Art Slade (who is coming to FIMS on October 23 for the Lunch Bucket speaker series - mark your calendars!), discusses the reasons he became (and stayed) a reader as a young boy on his blog. His answer? Heavy metal.
Two thoughts. Why did I become a reader? I think mainly because I always had books around and reading was made to be enjoyable and not "work". A big part of that was that my parents supported my reading whether it was Stephen King or magazines or Hardy Boys or whatever - no pressure to read worthy literary works. Why did I stay a reader as a teenager? I'd accepted that I was more of a "nerd" than a "jock" by about grade six so being a big reader in my early teen years wasn't any more embarrassing. (I remember our Grade seven teacher made us do 10 book reports during the year. If you did 15, he bought you a Coke. I did 52. He only bought me one Coke.) As well, our hometown was so small that the lines were blurred. I played on the hockey and football teams as well as being on yearbook and in drama.
The other important question. Which heavy metal influenced my reading? None off the top of my head but I can say that one thing that links almost all of my favourite artists - Boo Radleys, REM, Radiohead, Hawksley Workman - are obtuse, poetic lyrics and my other favourites are simply poetic - John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen.
Classmate of the Day: Missed their party last night (too tired after the pool party and a class bbq) but met up with David and Sabina at APK this afternoon for a good visit that I probably wouldn't have gotten at their party anyhow. They're off to Ottawa tomorrow. They really did so much to make my first eight months here so amazing and successful and I owe them a huge thanks for that. I don't know if this analogy works but I was thinking that first term is like kindergarten, second term is like grade eight and (I'm guessing) third term will be like grade twelve. So getting to hang out with and learn from some middle school kids while I was only in kindergarten was a great advantage in helping me in this program in so many ways.
I'm off to another end-of-term party so hopefully this post isn't too disjointed or has too many errors (compared to usual anyhow.)
Saturday, July 15
Mark Your Calendars RIGHT NOW!
by
Jason
on Sat 15 Jul 2006 09:11 PM EDT
Got some amazing, great, wicked cool news yesterday. Art Slade, who won the Governor General's Award for Children's Literature for his novel, Dust in 2001, will be coming to FIMS on Monday October 23 to speak as part of the Lunch Bucket Speaker Series!
A few details have to be ironed out yet but the date is now confirmed. Yay!!!
In addition to being an excellent writer, Art is a great guy and very entertaining speaker. Whether you're interested in children's literature or not, you should plan to come out to this event. It'll be amazing.
Monday, July 10
July 19 = Busiest Day of the Year
by
Jason
on Mon 10 Jul 2006 03:17 PM EDT
July 19 is shaping up to be the busiest day of the year for those of us who enjoy the extracurricular activities that library school offers. Noon - 1pm (NCB 293) - Lunch Bucket Speaker Series with Jean McKay, author & creative writing instructor and Corey Redekop, soon-to-be-published FIMS student. Whether you're a closet writer or not, come out and learn about the writing process and what it takes to get published. 4:30 - 5:30pm (NCB 293) CLA Student Chapter Presents...Cabot YuAre you interested in working for the Government of Canada? Not sure what GoC BBB and LS mean? Then on July 19th from 4:30-5:30p.m. in Rm. 293, join
us for an informal discussion with Cabot Yu about how to find and apply
for library jobs in the federal government. Also, find out how to use
your coop experience to your advantage in landing a job.
PLUS: Tired of being pelleted with popcorn? What can your library
association do for you? How can CASLIS Ottawa and CLA help make your
MLIS experience more meaningful and useful? Tell us what you think.Cabot Yu (MLIS '99) works as an Electronic Information Specialist at Citizenship and Immigration Canada. He is also on the executive of the Council of Federal Libraries' Priorities and Planning Committee and of CASLIS Ottawa.
(Personal note: Cabot is a really wicked guy who is super-active in the Ottawa area and is sure to have lots of good things to say. Super-active? Is that like radioactive? Because he's that too!)
5:30 - 7:30pm (NCB 114) Student Film Series
Quinn Dupont will be hosting a free screening of a film which is connected to libraries and library-related issues. This month's film will be "The Motorcycle Diaries". As I think I said somewhere else, come out for this. It will make you a better librarian (or your money back!)
Tuesday, May 23
Compression Depression
by
Jason
on Tue 23 May 2006 11:39 PM EDT
Had our first 506 - Management course this morning and it was actually pretty good. I had this fear that some Ivey-esque (that's the name of the business school here - some rich dude "bought" the naming right on it. I wonder who'd buy the naming rights to FIMS? The JK Rowling School of Library Science? The Stephen King School of Information?) business professor would show up in a suit & tie expecting us to wear similar outfits and speak in nothing but business buzzwords. But only one classmate wore a tie (and that's his style of dress anyhow - I'm no fashion critic but if I remember it was a dark black blazer wtih a deep red tie. Well, it wasn't a dark blue IBM suit - that's for sure!) so it's all good.
The prof actually seemed to take pleasure in pointing out the buzzwords he'd used in his lecture notes so that's a good sign as well. The workload isn't horrible but we have weekly reading reports which means no slacking off on the reading at all (like you could get away with a bit more in first semester.) One of the books I got from Chris Dixon is the text for the class (I didn't even realise it was - just sounded interested when I claimed it) so that's going to help a lot. The less photocopying I have to do in this program, the better.
Yeah, so anyhow: "Compression Depression"...
The prof is new to UWO and had to finish teaching some courses in the States so we didn't start until two weeks late. So to make up for the lost weeks, the rest of our classes will be half an hour longer (which means they start at the even more ungodly time of 8:30am instead of our usual morning start of 9am.) Which is fine and makes sense. Except that there are two Stat holidays that fall on Mondays over the summer and if you have a class on Monday, as far as I've heard from people, you won't be asked to make those up. (And worse, I don't have any classes on Monday so I don't get these "extra" days.) And there's one Stat on a Friday and same thing - no make-up classes. And some profs end up cancelling the odd class or not holding a class during the last week or whatever. So I'm not sure why we have to have a "compressed" schedule for 506? I guess some people feel they're paying for 14 weeks and they better get 14 weeks, dammit! But for me, I think we're in a professional program and I'm happy to have fewer classes (in any course) if it means more time to work on my other projects, my reading assignments or my extracurricular activities (I'm a bit behind on trying to get a May "Lunch Bucket" speaker as the two people I've contacted both have seemingly fallen through. Well, I'm still waiting for a reply from one but not holding out much hope.) I guess nobody's going to riot if they don't have a Lunch Bucket in May. But personally, I was really excited about the possibility of organizing an event every month while I was here. Oh well. More time for required readings.
Speaking of which, I got 95% (!) on my first assignment of the semester. Trust me - I can't believe it either. I've been feeling a bit burnt out and undermotivated the last couple weeks (especially compared to how gung ho I was last semester) realising that this semester is going to be a lot busier than the last one and my workload is pretty top heavy as well until the end of June. So getting that mark back gave me a bit of a boost and made me feel that my first semester wasn't a fluke (of course, there are many, many marks to come that could drop that ball right out from under me.)
Saturday, May 13
Five Easy Ways To Improve Library School
by
Jason
on Sat 13 May 2006 06:20 PM EDT
Spending the
afternoon at the Grad Club yesterday with a bunch of first-term
students got me thinking about what my first week here was like, what
my
first semester was like and ways that both could've been better.
1. Have a "Destressor" at the end of the first week of classes
This way, each semester's new students can get to know people in other
terms immediately. (The lack of connection between different
terms was a major issue for a lot of people in my cohort.) A
first-week Destressor would also nicely bookend with the one Student
Council holds at the end of semester. Student Council does have a
pizza party for new students early in term but this only introduces
new students to members of student council, who, although they are all
nice people, don't represent even 10% of the students in the
department. It also is a bit of a contrived situation (or it was
last semester) with the Student Council lined up in front of the room
but not really interacting with the first-termers and instead, although
I'm sure this wasn't their intention, it was like a line was
symbolically drawn right off the bat.
2. Have a students-only message board
This would mean that information can be exchanged easily and
past topics of conversation are accessible to all. I know the
Student Council is working to set-up a Sharepoint site but
unfortunately, it will be under the umbrella of the Department and
housed on their intranet site therefore making it inaccessible to
incoming students (until they get their user name and password) and
graduating students six months after they leave the program. To
my mind, a much better solution would be a more public forum (although still limited to potential students or alumni) where
anyone interested in the program can join and find out about the
current events, issues and people who are here.
3. Have a Repository For Student Writing
A few of us are working to start a journal for student writing but we
want it to have a focus on the "best of the best" student
writing. But there's also a lot of work being done just below
this level that would be of benefit for others to see. It seems
like a
shame that once an assignment is graded and handed back, these papers
go in a
drawer having been seen by only two sets of eyes - the student's and
the professor's.
4. Run Relevant Student Programs
A lot of the things I've done or
been involved in - the Lunch Bucket Speaker Series, the Freedom to Read
Event, the Student Journal, Quinn's Movie Series, etc. -
are the types of things I expected the Student Council to be doing when
I got here. Not to be too disparaing but things like bake sales, candy-grams and semi-formals seem
more like the work of a high school student council then the work that
should be done by the student council in a Graduate Program.
5. Make Better Use of Technology
That was basically my entire last post
so I won't rehash but it covers everything from the types of technology
we have (or don't have) access to to having all lecture notes online to
teaching students about cutting-edge technology in their first term and
not letting them avoid it by not taking technology courses after
505.
6. Release Class Lists Two Semesters In Advance
Okay, that last suggestion was pretty basic so here's an extra one. As far as I know, the Department knows what courses they're tentatively offering up to a year in advance. So why do they only release the courses for the upcoming semester and at that, only late in term? For myself, it would've been very helpful to know what was being offered in Fall 2006 as I was selected my Summer 2006 courses as I could've been a lot more strategic in which courses I picked. I know the Department is worried that students will get their hopes set on a class than it will be cancelled or whatever but isn't that what the words "tentative course list" mean?
.
To be fair, here are five things that are really good about this program:
1. The Peer Mentorship program
was awesome for me (although this really
depends - some people had horrible or literally no experiences out of
it. Trying to match people based on background, area of interest
or even geographic location rather than random assignment would improve
things)
2. The Professional Mentorship program is also very useful.
3. Someone told me that Western offers a lot more electives than most
other LIS programs. I haven't done the comparison so don't know
for sure but if true, that's very helpful. (Maybe I'll do an
independent study next semester comparing different aspects of the
various LIS programs across Canada. I think that would be really
interesting!)
4. Some people don't like the fact that FIMS has three intakes of
students per year (again, does anywhere else do this or are they all
September starts?) but I really like how it keeps things moving and
fresh.
5. Although I'm not planning to take advantage of it myself, the Co-op program
can be really useful, especially for anyone who doesn't have previous
library experience.
|
|
