APLA 2019

A closed meeting of the CAUL board of directors: https://caul-cbua.ca/committee/board-directors/members-list 

From the vehicles we drive, to the thermostats in our homes, just about everything around us uses coding (also known as programming).
Code is the language used to tell technology what to do. You can think about coding like you would think about following a recipe in a cookbook. For any given recipe, you are given a set of ingredients and a sequence of instructions. This sequence of instructions is similar to creating an algorithm (or set of steps) which must be followed by a device to accomplish a task.
But, here’s where it gets tricky - your device doesn’t understand the human language. Your device needs its own set of instructions written in a language it can understand in order to operate. This is where learning to code comes in handy.
Just like math or reading, coding has become a foundational skill. Learning about coding at a young age helps kids understand the world around them and helps them to develop their creativity and problem-solving skills. This is where the Library can help!
The workshop will begin with an introduction to coding concepts. After you learn the basics, you’ll have the opportunity to get hands-on with block-based coding and coding games. Together, we’ll use Scratch, micro:bits, Ozobots, Dot and Dash robots and more. We will also discuss how you can integrate coding into programs at the library.

Effective communications is vital for Libraries in today’s environment. Faced with challenges such as limited resources and time, it is essential for Libraries to approach their communications as strategically as possible. Join Dave Sorensen Memorial University’s manager of communications as he provides the key elements of communications planning so that your library can deliver meaningful communications about the value and role of Libraries in today’s society.

The transition from the MARC format to a linked data capable framework (BIBFRAME) will fundamentally change how libraries operate. Besides re-imagining how metadata is created and accessed, it will facilitate improved connection to datasets and vocabularies outside of our institutions. MARC has been the international standard for the distribution of library metadata since 1973, and for the past 45 years the MARC “container” has enabled libraries from around the world to share descriptive metadata with each other. However, with the growth of the Semantic Web and linked data over the past 15 years, librarians have increasingly found MARC to be problematic when sharing metadata outside of our domain.
As we begin to look beyond MARC, we are still left with many unanswered questions around what comes next and how linked data and BIBFRAME will be implemented in Canadian libraries.

This half day conference will provide an introduction to linked data, discuss BIBFRAME and its development, review various library initiatives working toward implementation, as well as look at some library linked data projects not directly related to BIBFRAME. The preconference will end with a discussion about alternatives to BIBFRAME some libraries are considering, and what libraries can do to start preparing their catalogues for the transition to a linked data environment.

A closed meeting of the APLA Executive: https://apla.ca/current_executive 

We are so excited to welcome you to St. John’s, and say Thank You for Exhibiting at APLA 2019! You are cordially invited to join us at our Past Presidents' Opening Reception at the newly renovated Emera Innovation Exchange at Signal Hill Campus, located on the wind-swept slopes of Signal Hill overlooking the St. John’s Harbour and the Atlantic Ocean.

This year's reception will offer plenty of opportunities to socialize, take in the breathtaking views, and experience the awe-inspiring music of Eastern Owl, an Indigenous led All Nations Women's Drum group based in St John's, NL.

As libraries re-imagine themselves for the future, we look to the past to see how far we have come. Have we come that far? Free access to knowledge to build an informed citizenry is one of the cornerstones of our profession; one of the reasons we have the buildings we work in. As the world debates whether libraries are still relevant and endlessly ponders the potential future or imminent death of the printed book, libraries continue to be valued by their communities. This informal, narrative view of libraries through the lens of one library worker will challenge you to think about the role you play as an agent in building for the future of the library you work in.

List of Exhibitors

The TD SRC team are looking for your input to help improve our service to libraries and families. Please join us for an open discussion on what works, what doesn’t and how we can deliver a better program to help keep kids reading and learning all summer long.

Librarians at Mount Saint Vincent University have been teaching a fully weighted credit course in information literacy since 2009.  In 2017 we reported on our experience getting this course mainstreamed in the curriculum via an article in Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice & Research, entitled “A Course of Our Own: Taking an Information Literacy Credit Course from Inception to Reality.”  Now that LIBR2100: Introduction to Research in the Information Age has been running for 10 years this follow-up research project delves into outcomes.  The data set from which we are working provides us with details on who are students have been over the last 10 years.  Cohorts include both Canadian and international students.  Students took this course right out of high school and also enrolled as mature or returning students.  Course sections were offered in traditional on-campus classrooms as well as via distance educational technologies.  Some students took LIBR2100 to fulfill degree requirements while others selected the course as a Humanities elective.   

The data set allows us to compare students who have taken LIBR2100 with a control group who have not.  Is the course making a difference? Are students who take LIBR2100 graduating at higher rates? Do they have higher GPAs upon graduation? Are some groups benefiting more from the course than others? 

This presentation will provide preliminary answers to these and other questions, and hopefully will provide more evidence for librarians considering starting a similar course at their university or college. 

We all see the profound changes taking place in our organizations and can probably agree that our human resources and the roles that people play are among the most complex and valuable assets of the organization. Management of these resources requires strategic thinking and thoughtful practice. So, why not use competency frameworks to amplify staff performance in ways that should ultimately result in greater individual and organizational success? Competencies are defined in many ways and there are numerous examples of competency development that we might incorporate into practice. Kathleen hopes to convince you that competency development and use is an important success factor to consider, and that we should all be familiar with the competency work that is being done in our field and the ways in which it might be used within our organizations. In this vein, she will also highlight the work of the CARL (Canadian Association of Research Libraries) Working Group on revising the CARL Core Competencies for 21st Century Librarians.

​List of Exhibitors​​​

All employees of CAUL member institutions encouraged to attend!

We’re at the one-year mark in our Strategic Plan, and it’s time to check-in to see how we’re doing on our goals and objectives, and whether we might need any course corrections. It’s also the time to evaluate our priorities as an organization to help guide us forward in ensuring the CAUL-CBUA is optimally supporting your needs. Members (which are all of you) define the priorities for CAUL-CBUA, so your participation in this process is critical. I’ve attached both our Strategic Plan and Operational Plan as the Operational Plan is a living document that provides context and more detail on the strategies and goals identified in the Strategic Plan.
It’s also the perfect time for us to check-in to ensure that we are all on the same page in terms of our mission, vision, values, and shared identity (our name) as these define us as an organization and the services that we provide for you. These three things are what tell people our reason for being, whom we serve, and our shared values that define all of our activities and services and reflect the values of you the membership. I’ve attached some representative examples of mission, vision, and values statements from other library consortia to stimulate thoughts and ideas.
Please join Susan Cleyle (CAUL-CBUA Vice-Chair) and I as we work together with you to ensure that CAUL-CBUA is best supporting your needs, and reflective of your priorities, in your work to optimally support your user communities.

As this roundtable is over the lunch period, please get your lunch first in the main hall and bring it to the meeting room to eat there. There will be plenty of tables to sit at to enjoy your lunch as you participate.

This panel session is co-hosted by the Atlantic Publishers' Marketing Association  and the Atlantic Provinces Library Association. Delegates of both the APLA and East Bound conferences are welcome to attend!

Moderator: Susanne Alexander, Goose Lane Editions
Noah Genner, BookNet Canada
Alex Liot, Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association

Storytime is full of energy and sometimes loud. For many of us this is all fun & games but some children (and adults) can find this type of environment very overwhelming. This presentation will give attendees the resources and ideas to create a storytime which keeps in mind the sensory processing needs of children. The presenter will also highlight what was learned from the Sensory Storytime pilot program implemented at the Corner Brook Public Library.

In 2016, MUN Libraries implemented Leganto, a new online course reserves system. Since its inception it has transformed the way reserves are handled at Memorial, in turn enhancing our service model for students and instructors. The success of Leganto at Memorial prompted the library’s multi-branch Leganto Committee to wonder, are reserves just the tip of the iceberg?
Early experiments by committee members revealed the potential of Leganto as a teaching and learning technology. Although marketed as a reserves system, we found that it could also be used to bring together guides, assignment materials, assessments, and learning objects for use during and after classroom instruction. To further explore this application of Leganto, librarians at Memorial were invited to participate in a formal pilot. The goals of the pilot were to create opportunities for instruction librarians to experiment with Leganto, as we investigated its potential to support IL. Participating librarians received technical and pedagogical support, and were encouraged to experiment and provide feedback. Participants decided individually when and how to integrate Leganto into their class design, resulting in a variety of interesting applications of the resource.
In this presentation we will provide further detail about the Leganto Information Literacy Pilot at Memorial Libraries. We will focus on the rationale behind this unique application of Leganto, and discoveries made as a result of the pilot. We will also discuss the design and workflow of the pilot, evaluation and participant feedback, identified challenges, and possible future directions.

This panel session is co-hosted by the Atlantic Publishers' Marketing Association  and the Atlantic Provinces Library Association. Delegates of both the APLA and East Bound conferences are welcome to attend!

Moderator: Stephanie Tobin, CBC NL
Dyan Bader, Nova Scotia Provincial Library
Bonnie Morgan, Newfoundland & Labrador Public Libraries
Rebecca Rose, Breakwater Books Ltd.

Picture books are so much more than fun words and bright pictures on a page. Books are mirrors for children that reflect the colour of their skin, their culture or their unique experiences. For many children, these reflections are the only times they see and read about others like themselves. As librarians, we are in a unique position to share picture books and we should always seek out diversity not only to provide mirrors but to provide windows to the world. Recommendations and book lists will be included.

Within the past few years, many Canadian universities have ceased contributing their theses and dissertations to the Proquest Theses and Dissertations database. The database, abbreviated as PQDT, had for a long time been the largest and most reliable source of indexing and, later, full text of theses and dissertations within North America and many other parts of the world. But the rise of institutional repositories, the open access movement, and issues with the quality of PQDT digitization have all led to a decline in university contributions to PQDT, particularly from Canada. The database no longer provides the “one-stop shopping” it once did for graduate students, researchers, and library staff seeking the freshest and newest academic research.

This presentation will report on a research project that involved testing and ranking 12 theses and dissertation gateways using the following criteria: Ease of use, Search capabilities, Geographic location of content, Amount and currency of content, Unique features, and Presence of sham content. The goal of the research is to rank the top contenders to replace PQDT, giving graduate students, researchers, and library staff a new list – likely longer than 1 but hopefully shorter than 12 – of the best databases to use to discover theses and dissertations on a subject.

A closed meeting of the CAUL Digital Preservation and Stewardship Committee.  

This panel session is co-hosted by the Atlantic Publishers' Marketing Association  and the Atlantic Provinces Library Association. Delegates of both the APLA and East Bound conferences are welcome to attend!

Moderator: James Lorimer, Formac Publishing
Jenny Benedict, West Vancouver Memorial Library
Cynthia Gatto, Halifax Public Libraries
Dominique Lemieux, Maison de la littérature

The Academic Success Kit (ASK) is an online tool developed for Acadia faculty members to direct students to the scholarly help they need. Using a simple web form embedded in courseware, instructors or professors can quickly and clearly articulate to a student what services are available to them to help improve their papers and assignments. The form lists research and writing elements, such as finding scholarly sources, properly citing materials, improving sentence structure and grammar, etc. that faculty can select while marking an assignment. Upon submission, the populated form is emailed to the student, letting them know precisely what they need to improve upon, and, more importantly, where and how to get help – through the Library or the Writing Centre. This tool seeks to close the gap between a student receiving a marked assignment and then seeking the help they need to improve their work. In this session, Jennifer and Maggie will speak to the development of the ASK tool and review preliminary findings from the pilot launch.

An interactive session in order to develop a vision, policy and strategy for Voilà Canada’s new National Union Catalogue. Library and Archives Canada (LAC) will give a short presentation on Voilà and some of the key challenges faced by the Canadian library community. The goal of the session is to develop with our key library stakeholders and library leaders a vision, policy and strategy for the future of Voilà in order to maximize participation and achieve greater representation by Canadian libraries. Following a short presentation by LAC there will be table discussion in order to get input from the library community on a new vision, policy and strategic direction for Voilà. We will also focus on some practical solutions and next step we need to take together in order to achieve this new vision, policy and strategic direction.

Open to all alumni from Dalhousie University's School of Information Management: https://www.dal.ca/faculty/management/school-of-information-management.html 

Join some of the East Coast's brightest literary stars for a gala evening in beautiful St. John's! Share the excitement as we announce the winners of the thirteen 2019 Atlantic Book Awards, including the prestigious Thomas Raddall Fiction Prize and the Pioneer Award, honouring lifetime achievement. The evening will also feature a fabulous silent auction and raffle, a chance to buy copies of all nominated books and an afterparty! Be sure to make this one of your conference highlights!

The Salzinnes Antiphonal is a unique 16th century illuminated manuscript in the collection of the Patrick Power Library, Saint Mary’s University. Created at the Cistercian Abbey of Salzinnes in Namur, Belgium, it contains religious text, music, and richly decorated illuminations ranging from beautifully embellished text initials to stunning full-page images of Biblical and non-Biblical scenes, including full-length portraits of nuns from the Abbey. Over the last twenty years the Antiphonal has became the centre of much attention and research, including two major exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, almost ten years of analysis and restoration at the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI), several international choral presentations of music from the book, and more. This session will look at the creation, history, and restoration of this fascinating manuscript, including detailing the extensive conservation work done at CCI. It will examine the challenges it presents for a library in having such an item in their collection, including environmental, security, and access concerns. It will also discuss future plans for the manuscript, including a traveling exhibition to Belgium next year.

For the nearly 3 million Canadians who cannot read print due to a learning, visual or physical disability, the ability to read materials in accessible formats is vital to enjoying a lifelong love of learning and reading. In recent years, most public libraries in Canada, including in Newfoundland and Labrador and other Atlantic provinces, have taken steps to provide exceptional inclusive services through CELA, the Centre for Equitable Library Access to their patrons with print disabilities. In addition to local audiobook and e-text collections, CELA libraries provide access to an additional 600,000 items such as books, magazines and newspapers in audiobook, e-text and braille formats.
Join us for a virtual tour of CELA's improved digital platform, launched this spring. Libraries will learn about a simplified registration process for patrons, educators and other professionals, and better search and item retrieval options allowing patrons to download or borrow titles from both CELA, and a partner organization called Bookshare. Participants will also learn about the apps and technologies to read CELA’s books, magazines and newspapers, and about CELA’s commitment to including indigenous works, award-winning titles including the Hackmatack Children's Book Choice Awards and more.

In the academic world there is intensifying interest in the creation and maintenance of online professional identities. Academic librarians must work through how to match that interest with services and use of library resources and expertise. Interest in this form of identity rests not just with individual researchers wanting to establish and track their own scholarly output for funding, promotion and publication but with administrators seeking reliable data to measure research impact of a department, faculty or university as a whole.

Key areas of expertise render librarians as natural supports for this critical aspect of scholarly communications. We are able to provide support for the effective use and maintenance of tools intended to allow researchers to create unique professional identities. This includes awareness of existing and emerging tools and services; the purpose, unique features, and limitations of each; and how they potentially fit into a broader picture of scholarly communications. In pursuit of this goal, we have engaged in educational programming for liaison librarians as well as webinars and drop-in sessions for researchers.

This session will include a summary of these activities and include explanation of the benefits of ORCiDs, ways to add data to ORCiD profiles, challenges of data from various sources such as Google Scholar and Scopus, and clarifying the relationship between these and other tools, such as social media platforms, repositories, and CRIS systems.

In this presentation, you will learn about the live streaming experiences at the Halifax Public Libraries. This presentation will cover the successes, the ‘lessons learned’, and the technological requirements to get started.

Whether someone has a busy schedule, or they are unable to physically visit the library, live streaming services can have an impact in a wide variety of contexts. Learn how you can expand your audience, extend your reach beyond your library’s walls, and ensure library services are accessible to everyone in this presentation.

List of Exhibitors

Carleton University’s MacOdrum Library was one of the first academic libraries in Canada (without a Faculty of Education) to build a significant graphic novel collection. At the time, developing a sizeable graphic novel collection in a non-Education academic library was largely untried. As an early adopter, or ‘guinea pig’, the process encountered resistance from within the Library and from an academic institution engaged in research intensification. Years on, with the benefit of hindsight and with graphic novels now widely available in Libraries, it’s a good time for reflections of a guinea pig. This presentation provides deliberations on being an early adopter, with insights into early adoption and its accompanying risk aversion struggles. At a time when Libraries are working hard to remain relevant and connected to their users, early adopter narratives are perhaps more important than ever before. Early adopter culture is about opening individuals and organizations to start-up frustrations without the certainty of success. Yet, early adoption isn’t simply about being first-out-of-the-gate and might have more to do with managing expectations and ousting predictable outcomes. Embracing the challenge of change, this presentation seeks to celebrate the guinea pig and the messiness of early adoption.

NNELS is a library of books in accessible formats available to readers with print disabilities across Canada. It’s an exciting time for these readers! We’re working with Canadian publishers to learn how to make ebooks that are “born accessible” which means that they are built in such a way that anyone can read them with the tools they have, including ebook readers, apps, and assistive technology. We’d love to share what we’ve learned so far, where we’re going next, and invite you to be part of the movement.
We’d also like to spend some time being very practical by reviewing procedures for accessing alternate format materials and pairing them with technology and reading tools. Please bring your questions about books, file formats, or patrons with print disabilities in your community.

For many the tip of the information iceberg is often only what gets published in academic journals. This belief and practice leaves a vast amount of research and information sitting below the surface on shared drives or industry specific websites. Librarians know there is a world of information below the surface of academia-the world of grey literature that holds equally insightful and valuable clues that impact patients, programs and policies. Librarians, and producers of grey literature know that if it could be accessed consistently it would, in fact, change the way research is published and information is shared. This begs the question; could open access invert the publishing iceberg by bringing insightful grey literature to the surface where it can be found quickly and consistently?
This presentation will talk about the global movement toward open access and will enlighten participants with the latest news and debates regarding open access including Plan S, and the University of California vs Elsevier and how one advocate and supporter of information access sees a new role and skill set for librarians and online libraries in the world of open access.

This year the Acadia University Library made some big changes to the library website and the way electronic services are delivered. Acadia revamped its website to a “search” orientation. This new website included the incorporation of a bento-style search over the Primo discovery layer, as well as, boxes to make it easier to find journals, databases, reserves, archives, and information on the library website. In tandem, the system staff developed a site to track the website usage, including search terms, hourly usage, types of browsers, on and off campus use and a heat map. We also came one step closer to single sign on for our patrons, allowing faculty, staff and students to log into both Novanet and Relais with their Acadia credentials. We learned a lot and would now like to share our experience. In this session, Jennifer will demonstrate both sites and discuss issues that were discovered including problems with categorizations in Primo, cataloguing errors, and the exclusion of important sources. Josh D’Entremont, Acadia’s Library Technology Specialist, will be on hand to answer any technical questions about the backend development of single sign on, the bento box, and the stats/usage site.

Libraries routinely receive offers of collections of books from generous donors. For an academic library, these offers often come from retiring faculty whose book collections are extensive. Large donations of books have both pros and cons for the library. Donations allow libraries to acquire material that they may not otherwise be able to purchase, and every donation has the potential to contain a rare and valuable gem. However, every donation also requires time spent creating spreadsheets, checking holdings, evaluating and comparing titles, and determining the monetary value of books. The hidden costs of processing a ‘free’ book can exceed the cost of purchasing a new book.
In April 2018, the Angus L. Macdonald Library at St. Francis Xavier University had over 8,000 donated books stored in the basement, waiting to be evaluated. Although the processing of donations was an ongoing activity, it was not a high priority, and with a limited number of people to do the work, we could not keep up with the amount of donations we received.
In need of a plan to address our donation backlog, I started gathering data. I examined donation policies, analyzed the workflow of our donations process, calculated the salaries expense, and gathered usage statistics. This presentation discusses the findings of my investigation. Are the donated books that we add to our collections really worth the time, effort, and money we spend processing them?

According to Statistics Canada, 1 in 8 Canadian households are currently food insecure. Halifax, Nova Scotia, has the highest proportion of food insecure households in the country. Grocery prices are anticipated to rise in 2019 by at least $400/year per household.

Over the last year, Halifax Public Libraries (HPL) has committed to food literacy programming. By securing grants and developing lasting partnerships with community organizations, library branches have been able to: host regular food programs, develop new kitchen spaces, venture into the community to teach food literacy and hire a Food Literacy Specialist. These initiatives deepened our awareness of food scarcity in our communities, and underscored the importance of continued food programming and healthy snack delivery in our libraries.

In this presentation, three library staff will share their experiences addressing food insecurity through community responsiveness and collective impact approaches. Presenters will discuss the development of food strategies at HPL, successes & challenges, partnerships, fundraising opportunities, programs, and future plans.

Increasing recognition of the value of institutional repositories (IRs) over the past fifteen years has led to post-secondary educational institutions of all sizes creating some form of an IR to host the intellectual output of their institutions. However, the feasibility and sustainability of implementing IRs, particularly when using open source (OS) IR software, has been mostly explored by larger post-secondary institutions; the experiences of small academic institutions using OS IRs has been unexplored, save for individual case studies.

Given that post-secondary institutions in Atlantic Canadian are predominantly under 10,000 FTE and thus considered small institutions, the question of how Atlantic Canadian OS IRs compare to the rest of Canada is ripe for exploration. By breaking down the work involved in maintaining an OS IR--staffing, technical support, budgeting, and more--the unique challenges and successes of our regional IRs can be better understood. This presentation will explore the results of a research project conducted in Spring 2018, wherein Canadian post-secondary institutions were surveyed about their experiences using open source institutional repository software. Preliminary results were presented at Open Repositories, and now the experiences of repositories in Atlantic Canada are the focus.

Overall, Atlantic Canada is on par with the rest of Canada with regards to addressing the needs of an IR and of using OS software, but there are a few challenges felt more keenly in the region: smaller budgets, less experienced staff, concerns about the usability of OS IR software, and more. This presentation will examine those challenges and the underlying reasons for why we’ve excelled in some areas and are struggling with others, all with the goal of generating discussion about the opportunities available to Atlantic Canadian post-secondary IRs in order to improve our practices.

While there are many perks to working in a small university library, having complete
control over the library webpage is rarely one of them. Often, library webpages are a
product of a centralized IT department that affords library workers limited editing access
via a content management system (CMS). Yet our webpages and our users have unique
needs in comparison to the needs of the greater university. Our library webpages are a
virtual extension of our physical space; they are access portals for our constantly growing
collections of digital resources, they are spaces for users to reach out for help via live chats
or appointment bookings, and they provide our library workers with valuable statistics
about usage and resource needs.
This presentation will describe the Mount Saint Vincent University Library’s transition
from a university-wide CMS to a webpage designed entirely by library workers using
LibGuides. LibGuides is a CMS designed specifically for libraries that allows for the
publication of research guides, blogs, and interactive content, while also providing secure
access to licensed resources such as databases and eBooks. Using a number of different
User Experience methods, our team embarked on an ambitious project to take control of
our webpage in order to better meet the needs of our library users and staff.
We strive to share our process, our methods, and the mistakes we made along the way in
order to provide inspiration to other libraries wishing for more control over their webpage.

A closed joint meeting of CAUL's Digital Preservation and Stweardship and Collections commitees with representatives of Library and Archives Canada.

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) will give a short presentation on the work it has been doing and what is planned for the near future; the implementation and milestones of the library system renewal, the new Co-Lab tool, Digital Preservation, Indigenous Initiatives, the LAC three-year plan, and more.

Art Hives: Open, creative, inclusive, inspiring. Supplies and facilitation provided. Creativity needed. All ages, all genders welcome. Libraries: providing access; assisting literacy connections; inviting makers; and encouraging discourse. An inspired match? Join us and learn about the research project “Libraries as Public ‘Home Spaces’: Engaging with Multiple Literacies through Community Pop-up Art Hives.” Public and Academic Libraries throughout St. John’s hosted twenty-five portable art studio sessions in 2018. Learn about the journey and where it leads next.

Research Data Management (RDM) is becoming an increasingly important issue for post-secondary institutions. The Tri-Agencies (SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR) are expected to release a new policy that will stipulate that institutions have an institutional strategy for dealing with research data. Part of the responsibility will lie with researchers and the management of their research data.

Three Atlantic universities are aiming to discover how researchers are storing, using and sharing their data through administering a survey using an instrument that has been used at many Canadian universities. Surveys will be administered in Winter 2019. Data from the surveys will be analyzed separately by each institution and may be combined to identify commonalities and possibilities for collaboration in the region.

The results of these surveys will help librarians, IT specialists, data managers, and others interested in data management to understand current practices and attitudes. The results will also be used to contribute of the development of RDM services and resources across Atlantic post-secondary institutions with the aim of being prepared for the Tri-Agency policy once it comes into effect.

Digitization can be an important and useful way to expose collections, improve access and generate interest. However, this process can be taxing for libraries and researchers with limited skills and resources. Our official job titles are often the tip of the iceberg of what we do, and we may find ourselves involved in projects for which we do not consider ourselves experts. Three librarians from Mount Saint Vincent University will discuss their use of Omeka for three very different collections: a Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection, a Home Economics Archive, and a collection of woven mathematical artifacts. Despite the differences in the collections, many similar challenges and questions arose. Panellists will provide a brief description of their projects before discussing their experiences of choosing metadata schema and controlled vocabulary, the importance of beta testing, and wrestling with imposter syndrome. Brainstorming, planning and collegial support became essential tools for perseverance and success.
The purpose of this panel is to share our processes, experiences, and mistakes with the audience. We wish to initiate a conversation and share expertise among our colleagues. This session will be of interest to librarians, information managers and library technicians dealing with small collections or working with patrons who are working with a small or niche collection to make it more accessible. Our focus is on digitization by non-experts and what can be done with minimal financial resources.

Equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) continues to be one of the most important agendas many organizations try to implement or achieve, and the library as an organization is not immune to this either. In fact, within the last few years EDI became a hot topic in libraries in north America generally and Canada in particular. Many libraries and library associations (academic, private, public, special) have set up committees with the sole purpose of ensuring that EDI is achieved. Furthermore, many guidelines, standards and competencies, distinguished seminar series, webinars, just to mention a few, have been created or introduced to assist many of these committees and any interested individuals on how to make EDI achievable. According to the Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA-FCAB), “Libraries have a responsibility to contribute to a culture that recognizes diversity and fosters social inclusion” and this is because “libraries have a unique and unparalleled ability to bring people and knowledge together.” Hence, as libraries transform and are in the “midst of great change” as the theme of the conference suggests, I believe an important component of this great change is to incorporate a significant emphasis on EDI. Thus, the question is, will EDI be achievable in libraries or will it be just the flavor of the month? My aim here is to encourage conversations around issues of EDI in the library field because EDI cuts across many areas of librarianship from staffing to collections and beyond.

Open Access has been a fixture of scholarly communications for some time now, albeit one that is still subsumed with considerable misinformation and mystery. In keeping with the conference theme, this panel will consider to what degree the current state of Open Access in academic libraries is just the tip of the iceberg and what progress or changes we might expect in coming years. Featuring five academic librarians from different institutions throughout Atlantic Canada, each panelist will discuss the services and receptiveness for Open Access at their respective institutions, as well as future prospects for Open Access in the Atlantic region and beyond.

With its increasing use in both public libraries and educational institutions, virtual reality (VR) is becoming an important technology for institutions to consider and provide access to. However, not every university can afford the space required for a makerspace or VR lab, and with shrinking budgets, space and resources continue to be tight. Libraries have provided solutions to challenges such as this before, and can do so again. At our small university, we do not currently have the space for a makerspace or VR lab, but this has not stopped us from implementing VR in classrooms and research projects. By using new ideas alongside established methods of providing access and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, we are able to meet new technological challenges and thrive in their rapidly changing landscape. This creates not only a partial break with traditional operations, but uses the solid lessons learned from them to find new, successful structures.
In this presentation, we will discuss the rollout of VR at our university. This will include discussion of the results from current mixed-methods research using VR that the Burman University Library has been doing in conjunction with the faculties of Art, Education, and English, as well as the overall use of VR in the university and the plans we have for VR in the future. Ideally, libraries (both public and academic) will come away with ideas and methods to provide access to, and use, VR without much more than the initial cost of investing in the hardware/apps, while also finding avenues for partnerships.

Open to all members of the Atlantic Provinces Library Association.

For our annual Friday night banquet, we’ll head to Pippy Park, one of Canada‘s largest urban parks. With a panoramic view of the natural surroundings and spacious decks, the Admiral’s Green Clubhouse is an ideal spot for our awards and banquet. Come celebrate the Merit Award winner, and congratulate them on their outstanding contribution to library services in the Atlantic Provinces. 
 After a variety of appetizers, participants can enjoy live music provided by Ted Dancin’ , a pop rock cover band that will keep you dancing and singing along all night!
 Free transportation to and from the conference venue will be provided

Public libraries need to evolve and grow in order to meet the rapidly changing needs of surrounding communities. In Saint John, NB, the University of New Brunswick (UNB) and the Saint John Free Public Library (SJFPL) have formed an innovative partnership whereby university students and librarians mutually benefit by researching (UNB) and implementing (SJFPL) best practices in the library.

Experiential education has the potential to increase students’ civic knowledges and aptitudes (King, 2018; Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). By engaging students in service learning with the Saint John Free Public Library, students can find applications for their disciplinary knowledge in their communities.

In January 2019, five social science students from UNB joined the Saint John Free Public Library (SJFPL) for a class project. These students gained valuable experience working with the public, identifying needs in our community, and planning/executing health programs at the library. In this presentation, we will discuss the partnership, a province wide initiative, between SJFPL and UNB, which has been ongoing since September 2018.

We will discuss future partnerships between UNB and SJFPL, offer advice to other public libraries with limited funding and the impact this partnership has had on both UNB and SJFPL.

Manning, Raghavan, and Schütze (2008) define information retrieval as “finding material...of an unstructured nature...that satisfies an information need from within large collections.” In today’s modern information-dense society, information retrieval takes place both within and beyond library walls. And, as critical librarians state, from policies to services, libraries are “never neutral.” But, libraries are no longer the unique gatekeepers to the information universe. Thus the question arises, is a lack of neutrality unique to libraries? To address this question, this presentation aims to provide a solid overview of the present-day research on bias and diversity in popular algorithms and information retrieval systems while observing this analysis from the perspective of critical librarianship.

Gander Flybrary
The airport has partnered with Newfoundland and Labrador Public Libraries to unveil a small "Flybrary" — a give-a-book, take-a-book trolley inside the airport's departures area.

Subject Coordinator: a new role to support team-based research services
Carleton University’s MacOdrum Library underwent a Public Services Review in 2016-18 to ensure quality, timely and focused public services to the users. The Review found the current liaison service model, which included collection development, reference/research help, and library instruction duties, was not sustainable as staff were unable to perform duties consistently throughout the academic year. A reorganization of some public service departments was recommended resulting in an amalgamation of two departments (Reference and MADGIC) into a single department (RSS) with a new service model and organizational structure. The new organizational structure would emphasis a team-oriented approach, allowing for a more flexible and adaptable liaison. 
Three Subject Coordinator (SC) are responsible for coordination of activities of the Subject Team, which includes facilitating knowledge sharing and collaborative group work as well as setting Team objectives and establishing procedures. Good flow of internal and external communication is key in this role. Duties related to human resources management for the Subject Team are not part of their responsibilities. The SC also collaborates with Collection librarians (also new roles in RSS) and Functional librarians to ensure that the teaching, learning and research needs of Carleton faculty and students are understood and met. Last of all, the SC plays an integral part of the planning and implementation of strategies to enhance departmental services.
This presentation will discuss the opportunities and challenges the three SCs have encountered since the implementation of the new structure, including how they assess the successes and areas for improvement.





Quietly Ahead of the Curve – An Exultation/Exhortation of Atlantic Libraries
The library systems in Atlantic Canada – public and academic – have quietly been at the forefront of some trends now considered current in libraries in the rest of Canada. From patron offerings, to administration, to the very structure of the library system, things have been happening in the eastern provinces long before they reach the rest of Canada.
Knowing about these, especially in the context of current trends in the fields, helped me during my recent degree at the University of Toronto, and led to my surprise at the lack of information about them outside of the Atlantic Region. This lightning talk will serve in part as an exultation of some of the things Atlantic Libraries have had on the go; in part as a catalyst to promote and publish about our forefront work in librarianship; and in part as a means of prompting further discussion about the many new and interesting ways libraries and librarians in the region are meeting the internal and external challenges presented within the profession, and to get the word out.

Red Alert: Surviving technical change
Change is usually for the better and we often spend countless hours preparing for change. What if you’re not expecting change? Even with planning, things can go wrong. What do we do when the perfect storm hits? How do we make the best of a bad situation? This session will review lessons learned from a major technical failure and share steps we can all take to be better prepared for times when technical change is thrust upon us.

It Came from the Second Floor: Rethinking our Approach to Teen Volunteers
Working in teen services affords the unique privilege of meeting youth from every possible background: Different income levels and world views, those from newcomer, indigenous or LGBTQ+ communities, teens handling issues of mental health, addiction, trauma, and many other experiences. But as the depth of service we provide expands, our libraries struggle to reorganize in a way that meets the demand of our communities. We essentially become victims of our own success: As teens start pouring in the door, it’s increasingly challenging to foster an environment where all teens feel welcome, represented, and have a voice in the library.
In the four years since it opened, our Central branch saw a surge in popularity, and this was a perfect opportunity to re-think the future of volunteering from the ground up. Instead of staff struggling to keep up with what makes a good teen space in the library, teen volunteers were given agency to shape it themselves. The program exploded, with Central getting up to 70 applicants at a time. A particular favorite became our youth-led podcast, It Came from the Second Floor. The podcast has hosted teen voices on everything from immigrating to Canada to indigenous issues to interviewing a bestselling author and everything in between. It is created, produced, recorded and edited at the library entirely by youth volunteers.
This presentation will focus on the conception and development of the podcast, and how any library can use its volunteer program to give teens ownership of their library.

Those of us who are the product of public education in Canada were not always given the chance to learn the true story of Indigenous people from Turtle Island, yet we are the ones who are responsible for ensuring our current students have access to authentic and appropriate materials.  Kelly will speak to the importance of this work by librarians and teachers alike, and the role we all must play in reconciliation.

Open to all members of the Atlantic Provinces Library Association.