Libraries 2023-2024 Annual Report

January 13, 2025 Kristy Leave a Comment

Happy New Year! Dalhousie Libraries extends warm wishes for a year of success, collaboration, and growth.

We are happy to share our 2023-2024 Annual Report. Last year, we enhanced our services and resources, strengthened community partnerships, and continued to support research excellence at the university. It was a busy and exhilarating year connecting with our Dal community.

We invite you to read our report to discover more about the exciting things that happened in the libraries. You’ll find stories about our digital initiatives, our ongoing efforts to improve access to scholarly resources and meet some of our dedicated staff. Our annual report reflects our commitment to fostering learning and discovery across the Dalhousie community and beyond.

2nd Annual MacRae Library Research Poster Competition

January 13, 2025 Kristy Leave a Comment

Showcase Your Research

Attention all students and post-docs from the Truro Campus! The MacRae Library Student Research Poster Competition is returning on March 12, 2025, for its second year, promising another exciting opportunity for students to showcase their innovative research.

This event is a fantastic platform for budding researchers to present their work, engage with the academic community, gain valuable feedback, and possibly win a gift card prize.

Whether you’re a participant or an attendee, the competition is an excellent chance to explore diverse research topics, network with peers, and celebrate the achievements of student researchers.

Submit Your Application

To register for the competition, complete the online application form by March 5 and prepare a digital or print version of your research poster* to share with other students, faculty, and staff from the Truro campus on March 12 from 6-8pm.

Please note that digital posters will be presented to attendees as QR codes so your poster should be scalable for mobile devices. If you want to showcase a print version of your research poster, it must be submitted to the MacRae Library front desk by 3 pm on March 7. Posters will be displayed on the Library’s top floor from March 10-14, 2025. This competition is open to all Truro Start, undergraduate, graduate students, and post-docs on the Truro Campus and no previous publishing or presentation experience is required. Research can explore any topic and does not need to be new.

Vote for the Winners

On March 12, 2025, from 6-8 pm, researchers will engage with event attendees to discuss their posters in the MacRae Library Program Rooms (218/219). Audience members will vote for their favourite poster using a scoring rubric and the top three posters will receive a gift card. The event is open to everyone, including community members from Truro, Bible Hill, and surrounding areas.

Can’t make the event? Posters will be on display for asynchronous viewing at the MacRae Library from March 10-14, 2025.

Let’s come together and celebrate the incredible work of our student researchers and their future global impact. We look forward to receiving your submissions and hearing more about your work.

Important Dates

March 5 – Competition registration deadline
March 7 – Deadline to submit print posters (3 pm)
March 12 – Competition night (6-8pm)

If you have any questions, please contact Jaclyn Chambers Page at jchamberspage@dal.ca.

*Curious about how to prepare a poster presentation? Sign up for Research Camp, an online, asynchronous program created by Dal Libraries with support from the Writing Centre. It covers all the elements of research, from basic to advanced skills, with video lectures, interactive exercises, and more, including a special module on Poster Presentations in the “Presenting and Publishing Research” section. Self-register in Brightspace by clicking Academic Support > Self registration > Online Community – Research Camp 2024-2025. You can enroll anytime and complete as many modules as you wish.

Call for 2025 OER Development Grant Applications

January 9, 2025 Kristy Leave a Comment

The Council of Atlantic Academic Libraries has called for applications for AtlanticOER Development Grants. Funding is provided by the four Atlantic provinces (New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island).

AtlanticOER Development Grants provide financial support to instructors in the Atlantic Region creating and adapting new Open Educational Resources. The goal is to support instructors to increase the availability of quality, free, openly licensed resources to support student learning. You can apply for three different funding tiers, depending on the scope of your project. The tiers are:

Tier 1: Creating an Open Textbook (up to $7,000) – This funding is intended for the development of a new open textbook. The topic should not be covered in an already existing open textbook. This tier is meant for creation projects at a larger scale.

Tier 2: Adaptation of an Existing Open Textbook (up to $4,000) – This funding is intended for substantive adaptation projects. Sometimes it can be possible to find an open textbook that covers foundational knowledge but needs to be adjusted. For example, the textbook might require adjustments to ensure it adheres to local educational standards, or adjustments might be made to make it relevant to the local context (eg, an American business textbook may need adjustments to make it suitable for a Canadian business context), or new examples and interactive elements may be added to a book.

Tier 3: Creation of Ancillary Materials (up to $1,000) – This funding is intended for smaller creation projects. Ancillary materials can be defined as course materials that are meant to supplement and support a textbook. Examples of ancillary materials include: slide decks, interactive tutorials, and quiz and test banks. Often, ancillary materials can enhance student learning.

The application period closes on February 14, 2025.

EBSCO Database Interface Changes

January 7, 2025 Kristy Leave a Comment

EBSCO has migrated to a new interface that has changed the user experience with their electronic resources.

Dalhousie has opted to revert to the previous interface and has been assured that this version will be restored promptly.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

2024 Dal Libraries Survey Results

December 19, 2024 Kristy Leave a Comment

At Dal Libraries, we hold ourselves accountable to the university and the community we serve and measure our progress regularly. In January, we surveyed Dal students, faculty, and staff to assess our services and measure our impact. In March, we shared a brief note thanking you for your feedback and announcing the prize winners.

5,125 people responded to our survey – we are delighted and grateful for such an enthusiastic response. After reading and analyzing the feedback, we are happy to share the following results with you.

Areas Rated Highly Important Where We Are Doing Well

Wireless access
Information resources are meeting needs and helping students and faculty to be successful
Students feel comfortable asking staff for help
Help is available when needed
Staff provide accurate answers to questions

Priorities for Improvement

Improving access to quiet study areas
Improving access to group study areas

Other Areas for Improvement

Electrical outlet accessibility and maintenance at specific locations
Ease of use of printers at specific locations
Hours at specific locations
Laptop loaning for specific groups of students
Students with disabilities & Faculty: Accessing library resources through mobile devices
Faculty: The Libraries’ website and search box

Actions We are Taking

After careful review, the silent, quiet, and conversation-friendly study spaces at the Killam Library, the Kellogg Library Learning Commons at the CHEB, and the Law Library have been rezoned. We are monitoring these areas to ensure they meet users’ needs.
We are conducting usability and accessibility studies in preparation for a reimagined Libraries website in 2025. We will seek input and feedback from both students and faculty.
While our current budget does not enable us to extend our current building hours, we regularly consult our usage and foot traffic data to optimize our hours of operation.
We will be reviewing our laptop loan program in the near future.

We will provide updates on these items as we make progress.

We were bolstered by messages of support and enthusiasm for our libraries and our staff. One user said, “I am extremely happy with the library system. The staff are helpful, and a lot of thought and effort has clearly gone into setting things up to make it easy for students.”

Again, we are grateful to all who took the time to respond to our survey and we look forward to making improvements and adjustments to serve you better. If you have questions about the survey and results, please contact Assessment Coordinator Linda Bedwell.

Michael Vandenburg
Dean of Libraries

DalSpace Upgrade – A More Robust Institutional Repository

December 17, 2024 Kristy Leave a Comment

DalSpace is Dalhousie’s open-access institutional repository. It is used to preserve, store, and showcase digital content created by the Dal community. You may have used DalSpace to search for or cite scholarly work, explore archival material, or upload a Master’s or PhD thesis. DalSpace makes content discoverable not just to the Dal community, but to people worldwide.

DalSpace must be a stable, reliable resource for people, however they choose to use it. Software upgrades ensure it is always secure and supportable. Over the last year, a team from Dal Libraries worked together to upgrade DalSpace, including system administrators, instructional support technicians, and scholarly communications and metadata librarians who tested it and provided feedback.

People Notice When DalSpace is Down

As with any upgrade, the goal is to ensure a seamless transition with minimal downtime. Choosing a downtime period for the platform was a challenge. Geoff Brown, digital scholarship librarian, says he gets emails from around the world about the repository’s resources. He noted there can be more than 1200 items added to DalSpace in the run of a year, with the Faculty of Graduate Studies as DalSpace’s biggest contributor and the heaviest upload times in June as students add their theses. It is understandable why coordinating downtimes takes time and thoughtful attention.

What Has Changed

Although it has a new look and feel, the public interface of DalSpace was not the focus of the upgrade. The work was primarily on the back end to make what was already a secure, stable, and reliable repository more robust. David Mifflen, system administrator with Academic Technology Services, says the front and back ends of DalSpace are now separated and run on different servers. The user interface is simplified, faster, more flexible, and more secure. Changes and updates are now easier to perform and will not impact the user’s experience. In addition to the new look, filters offer more nuanced browsing and searching.

Read more about DalSpace. If you have questions about registration or uploading content, contact Geoff Brown.

AtlanticOER Development Grant Program – Upcoming Cycle

December 3, 2024 Kristy Leave a Comment

The Council of Atlantic Academic Libraries (CAAL-CBPA) has announced the 2025 cycle of the AtlanticOER Development Grants.

The AtlanticOER Development Grant program is intended to encourage and support educators in the Atlantic region in the adaptation, creation, and curation of Open Educational Resources (OER). These grants provide financial support to educators teaching credit-bearing courses at publicly funded post-secondary institutions who are interested in creating or adapting new educational resources for their classes. There are three tiers of funding that applicants can apply for, each of which represents a different scope and type of project.

Applications for the 2025 cycle of the AtlanticOER Development Grant program will be open in early January 2025. Applicants will have 6 weeks to submit their applications. The applications are put through a single-blind process and a committee of CAAL-CBPA members reviews and ranks the applications. Successful applicants will be notified in mid to late March 2025.

An open webinar detailing the application process will be held on January 14, 2025.

Get more information about the grant program and application process or check out the list of past grant-funded projects.

Horror Fiction Comes to Life in the Victorian Lounge

November 1, 2024 Kristy Leave a Comment

Dalhousie Libraries partnered with the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia again this year to bring scary stories to Shirreff Hall. This year, local horror writers and creative writing students read their spookiest works to an eager crowd in the dimly lit Victorian Lounge.

L’nu’skw (Mi’kmaw) writer and author Tiffany Morris began the evening with a nightmarish tale of a festering and possessed house that transmutes its lodgers into dolls. Morris’ story, Night in the Chrysalis from the collection Never Whistle at Night, set the stage for a thoroughly macabre lineup of stories and poetry.

Elliott Gish read her short story Tour, a darkly humorous narration of the morbid exploration of a house where a family met its tragic end. The listeners learned the gory details of the gruesome crime as the narrator navigated the house describing its rooms like a realtor selling to a hopeful buyer.

Sci-fi writer Brittni Brinn read Safe Passage from the anthology At the Lighthouse – a futuristic tale of a forlorn journey to a lighthouse that is expected to provide passage to a new life for a desperate and determined traveller but a dark twist delivers an unexpected fate.

Between each short story, creative writing students from Dalhousie and King’s shared their own works. Poetry and flash fiction were energetically read to the room by Tessie Doyle, Michelle Garcia-Burgos, and Liv Mazerolle.

Dal Libraries is committed to working locally with partners and communities to share knowledge, celebrate culture, and build capacity. This event is one of the ways the libraires work with community partners to celebrate local talent and art and connect with up-and-coming writers and creators from our Dal community.

About the Writers

Tiffany Morris is the author of the Ignyte, Indigenous Voices, Shirley Jackson, the Aurora award-nominated Green Fuse Burning (Stelliform Press, 2023), and the Elgin Award-winning horror poetry collection Elegies of Rotting Stars (Nictitating Books, 2022). Her work has appeared in the Indigenous horror anthology Never Whistle at Night, as well as in Nightmare Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, and Apex Magazine among others.

Elliott Gish wants to creep you out. A writer and librarian from Nova Scotia, her work has appeared in The New Quarterly, Dark Matter Magazine, Wigleaf, the Dalhousie Review, and many others. Her debut novel, Grey Dog, was published by ECW Press this year. Elliott lives in Halifax with her partner and a small black cat named Mr. Raymond Parks.

Brittni Brinn writes from a tower and sometimes a cottage in Mi’kma’ki. Their scariest stories appear in At the Lighthouse (Eibonvale Press) and Your Flight Has Been Cancelled (Little Ghosts Books). Keep an eye or ear out for her weird novella Misplaced, coming out on November 1, 2024, with Little Ghosts Books.

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