Library Ephemeria

As an instructor and professor I don’t believe in using technology in the classroom unless it serves a pedagogical purpose. Clickers when they were first introduced seemed to be a tool with limited functionality. Furthermore as at my previous institution, charging students a deposit for their required clickers seemed punitive.  I now have to determine for myself their usefulness in teaching as my new library has two sets.

In library instruction we always talk about assessment and how we can determine if students are learning what we think that they are learning.  I suppose clickers might provide a mode of doing this but I would want to try using it over a series of classes.  Knowing that my student base might skew a little older and that technology can possibly intimidate I might also want to try to provide other assessment criteria.  This might actually involve communicating with faculty about their goals for the instruction session.  I remain a skeptic but one who is willing to experiment.

Clickers in a classroom

Image Source:www.citl.ohiou.edu

Canada rocks!

Oh, how I have missed you extraneous letter u in random words.  I realized that I may not have sounded suitably appreciative about my return to Canada.  In one comic strip Diesel Sweeties managed to encapsulate my complex feelings about Calgary and Canada.

It might seem strange to some that I might have to be working at the process of making friends with my hometown again.  Like most relationships both parties have changed over the almost eight years since I lived here.  Calgary is booming, building cranes everywhere and traffic while not to Houston levels, is certainly  more congested.  People also seem to feel more cramped,  defending both their private and public spaces with an intensity I had not expected.  This seems to have led to a very small view of the world, their family, their jobs, and their immediate circle of friends.  I have heard statements from Calgarians on the news and in the newspaper that would not have seemed out of place in Texas.  There also seems to be a greater sense of materialism which is understandable considering the amount of money flowing through Calgary right now.

Perhaps it takes leaving your hometown to see it with clear eyes or perhaps I had always had an idealized perception of Calgary.  The Calgary that I remember had people who honestly cared about their neighbours and their city.  That Calgary, while more capitalistic than many other places, balanced it with a compassion and concern for all its citizens not just the ones with expense accounts and corner offices.

Well I have been back in Calgary for just over a week now and I am stunned/shocked by the tremendous change that has occurred in my hometown. I am very glad that I didn’t move back in the winter as I am finding the temperatures here a tad bit chilly at 13 degrees celsius (55 degrees for my american friends). I am NOT missing Houston’s sticky climate so I will keep my complaining to this post. To be continued in the winter no doubt.

I have a window which looks out into the pit of the new Taylor Family Digital Library which is broadly advertised on campus. It also looks out to the Kinesiology building where I plan on spending a goodly amount of time. In time this view will probably disappear so I will try to capture it at various points. Did I mention I actually have natural light in my office? And not one but two windows? Having lived through a previous construction project I am somewhat amused by the concern about how disruptive it will be. It will be disruptive, noisy and dirty. However, the end product is worth it, I promise.

On a plus side, this library puts its money where its mouth is. The Library and Cultural Resources group is committed to Open Access and is offering faculty and graduate students a $100 000 Open Access Author Fund to pay for any author costs required for publishing in Open Access journals. This is even more significant as that represents a good chunk of change that would be welcome in other areas of the library. Off to a good start!

Anyone else get a sense of American paranoia from Steven Colbert’s comment above? It was part of his show that outlined the Hockey Night in Canada music theme being passed around like cocaine at an eighties party in Washington. Watch the clip and decide for yourself who is truly being mocked although Ed Stelmach, Alberta’s premier doesn’t come off as the brilliant politician that we all know he is.

I realized that the process of disconnecting from my current POW would happen in fits and starts but it was brought home by a colleague last week. While trying to resolve a matter that I have been working on for over a year now, he asked, “Why do you still care?”. For a few reasons, I don’t want to leave a mess for the next person, I care what happens for my faculty and students, and because I hate loose ends. Perhaps it is this final point that is the most important, at least to me.

Before I left on holidays last summer I created documentation for my new supervisor so that she wouldn’t have to walk into a new workplace without any understanding of what had happened previously. Knowing that I wouldn’t be there when she arrived it was important to me that this process be as smooth as possible. Why is it when people leave positions or workplaces we do such a shoddy job of helping the transition for ourselves and the groups that we work with?

Perhaps my colleague was telling me in his own way that I need to start letting go of certain things. I do understand that this is occurring and will continue to happen. As a matter of fact I am skipping out on a few trainings in the next few weeks to focus on wrapping things up. I don’t want to leave feeling like I haven’t done everything that I can to help with the transition and right now it is feeling like a very lonely process.

I think that it took traveling to Canada for a conference for it to sink in. I am moving back to Canada in July, that’s a month or so away! I am starting my new position at the University of Calgary on July 7th. My position is social work and psychology liaison librarian and due to my work experience I will be coming in as an associate librarian. I am looking forward to learning more about my new subject responsibilities and meeting my faculty and students.

One of the reasons I chose this position is the implied promise to myself that I will start work towards a doctorate in education. At my relatively advanced age, I have gone back and forth about going back to school even part time and my dominant feeling around this is excitement. I realize that for many librarians, library school was not the life changing experience that it was for myself. Credit must be given to my professors and my program at the University of Alberta. I was not the best student in my class or even in the top quarter but I found my place in the world through my experiences there. I hope to experience this again.

So I am returning to my hometown and my mountains and I am embracing change and growth. Houston will always have a place in my heart but home is home.

I am not a religious person and I am grateful for my parents giving the option of participating or not in organized religion.  However, not having a belief in a higher power is pretty painful right this minute.  My friend, Michelle Boule gave birth to her son, Gideon Ries Smith on Saturday.  Gideon is struggling to live in the NICU unit at Texas Children’s Hospital here in Houston.  He has had a rough start to his short life.  Michelle and her husband Ries are first time parents and do believe in a higher power.  If you have a diety, god, or faith that you believe in could you please say a few words on Gideon’s behalf.

If you know Michelle and would like to know what has happened since Gideon’s birth on Saturday, Ries has outlined it on their family blog Defying Genetics.  I realize that you can’t bargain, argue or demand anything from a higher power but if words have any power they will see that Gideon needs to heal and go home with his parents.

My week started yesterday with my boss’s boss’s boss handing me a sheet of paper granting me continuing appointment from my institution. This is a significant point in my career as I have worked (too hard) towards this goal for 6+ years. However, its import is blunted due to the fact that I am leaving MPOW as of July 1st. I am returning to the Great White North of Canada for a position at an institution that will be named shortly.

So it is with a tinge of sadness that I say goodbye to my first job out of library school which I have to say rocked for the majority of my time here. I will miss colleagues, friends, students, faculty, and random Texans whom I have encountered in my time here. I will miss ALA conferences and all of my conference friends who I will see one last time in Anaheim.

This sadness is balanced by my excitement of facing new professional challenges and creating new goals at my new institution. I will also be able to begin working on some advanced degree work of my own which had been a deferred goal but one that I am equally excited about.

My family and Canadian friends are very excited about my returning to Canada but I leave behind a family here in Houston that I will never forget. Thank you.

If the Conservatives get their way we will see alot more of this.

And alot less of this.                                      

I find myself wondering if Canada’s ruling party, the Conservative Party is trying to restrict what “types” of films and television shows receive federal support out of sheer ignorance or to assign nefarious motivations.  Bill C-10 as proposed would allow the Heritage Minister to determine criteria or guidelines for film and television producers if they wish to receive tax credits.  The minister could withdraw tax credits for productions deemed to be “contrary to public policy.”  These guidelines remain nebulous but here is a description from this story on the CBC website.

The guidelines have not yet been established but would cover violence, hatred and sexual content in film and TV productions, or anything else the minister believes should not be financed by Canadian taxpayers. Committees within the heritage and justice departments would be charged with vetting productions and implementing the guidelines. Any film or television program found to have contravened the guidelines could have its tax credits withdrawn and might be asked to repay funding given through Telefilm, the federal film funding agency, or the Canadian Television Fund, the federal funding agency for TV.

This will have a chilling effect on productions who may not find outside funding without these tax credits.  The federal government is well aware of this fact and may be relying on a lack of publicity about this change to longstanding policy.  Sarah Polley, director of “Away From Her” has suggested that her own film would likely not have received this support under such guidelines.  The legislation has passed through the House of Commons and is being debated in the Senate, where if there are thinking members not currently sleeping through sessions, it may expire from exhaustion.  The real kicker is that foreign productions who don’t benefit from the tax credits obtain an indirect benefit through government support of the Canadian film industry infrastructure.