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Archives for Marlo MacKay

Three architecture databases to try in November

by Allie Fulford

The Dalhousie Libraries is trialing three exciting architecture databases. Two of the databases contain photos, drawings, plans, sections, and elevations, information crucial to architecture students. The third database is a collection of illustrated talks with the ‘greatest minds in modern architecture’.

Inspiration from DETAIL Verlag is an online image and reference database for architects. It is a full-text database with photos, drawings, plans, and technical information sourced from DETAIL print magazine. The database, fully optimized for mobile devices, currently contains 3700+ projects that are completely downloadable as PDF files. The database is updated monthly; each year more than 156 new projects/references are added. You can access Inspiration here: https://dal.ca.libguides.com/inspiration

Building Types Online comes from Birkhäuser, a leading publisher for architecture materials based in Switzerland, and from Bauwelt, Germany’s leading architectural journal. The database includes 1,400 case studies and thematic articles, 6,300 floor plans, sections, elevations and other drawings, plus 2,700 photographs. Building types include housing, schools and kindergartens, offices, industrial buildings, research and technology buildings, museums, churches, libraries and hospitals. The database has a strong focus on residential buildings with many international examples. New case studies and building types are added annually. You can access Building Types here: https://dal.ca.libguides.com/btonline

Pidgeon Digital began in 1979 as a series of tape/slide talks created by Monica Pidgeon, the editor of Architectural Design from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. She wanted students of architecture and design to have the opportunity to share the thinking of world leading members of the architectural community, to whom they would not otherwise have access. In 2006 the illustrated talks were digitized. Pidgeon Digital is fully searchable and currently consists of 265+ illustrated talks and 200+ transcripts. New talks are added regularly. Notable speakers include 17 Pritzker Prize Winners and 15 RIBA Royal Gold Medal Winners. You can access Pidgeon Digital here: https://dal.ca.libguides.com/pidgeon

 

Evidence Synthesis Training

Are you considering or involved with a research review such as a systematic or scoping review? Two training sessions offered during fall reading week may be of interest for faculty, staff, or students planning or starting an evidence synthesis project.

Monday, November 8, 3 p.m.
Nancy Owens from Covidence will provide an overview of using review software to facilitate your literature review process. For more information see the Library Event page. Registration for this event is managed externally. Please be sure to register here if you’d like to join, or if you’re unable to join but would like to receive a recording of the session ~24 hours after it commences.

Wednesday, November 10, 1–3 p.m.
Robin Parker, Evidence Synthesis Librarian based out of the W.K. Kellogg Health Sciences Library, will provide an introduction to systematic and scoping review methods, covering the steps and resources needed to plan a review. This training will consist of a 90-minute online workshop plus additional time for discussion, questions, and individual support. This session is appropriate for undergraduate (especially honours), graduate, and postgraduate learners as well as faculty and staff who are new to review methods or supervising students working on review projects. Register for this workshop through the Dal Libraries events calendar: https://dal.libcal.com/calendar/events/SystematicScopingReviews.

Two Awards for the Dalhousie Archives for Outstanding Archival Work

with content from Creighton Barrett and Sarah Stevenson

The Dalhousie Libraries is delighted to share wonderful news that the Archives was recently the recipient of two awards from the Council of Nova Scotia Archives. The Archives serves as Dalhousie’s corporate memory by identifying, preserving, and making available institutional records of enduring value, including textural, photographic, audiovisual, and electronic materials. The Archives also acquires records of independent student, alumni and employee organizations, private papers from prominent faculty and alumni, and university publications. Together, these records document the work of the university, and tell the story of the Dalhousie community and its people over time.

Doug Kirby Award for outstanding achievement in archival preservation

The Dalhousie Archives won the Doug Kirby Award for their Digital Preservation System Project, which began in 2018. Led by Digital Archivist Creighton Barrett, the Archives’ need for a robust digital preservation solution became increasingly apparent as the Libraries began digitizing historic university records to celebrate Dalhousie’s 200th anniversary in 2018.

With support from the senior leadership team of the Dalhousie Libraries and colleagues in Procurement, Creighton outlined the functional requirements and wrote a request for proposals for a digital preservation system based on the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) and other international digital preservation standards.

After years of testing and development, the Archives created its first standards-compliant Archival Information Packages (AIPs) in April 2021. While this research and development was under way, the Dal Libraries also took other initiatives to support its emerging digital preservation program:

  • Established a new Preservation Committee with a mandate to carry out Preservation Planning functions described in the Open Archival Information System (OAIS)
  • Implemented new user-friendly “Managed File Transfer” software that will support a new file transfer service to be launched later this year. See our YouTube tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_fU8Ssz4FQ
  • Reconfigured the Storage Area Network (SAN) digital storage environment that houses approximately 120 TB of archival data waiting to be ingested into the digital preservation system.
  • Developed documentation on Archivematica and the Managed File Transfer software.

The Dal Libraries continues to work with Artefactual Systems to configure and maintain the digital preservation system.

Dr. Phyllis R. Blakeley Award for outstanding accomplishment in archival work

The Dalhousie Archives won the Dr. Phyllis R. Blakeley Award for the Ronald St. John MacDonald fonds processing project. Paulo Matheus de Sousa Lima, Archives Assistant, was the primary staff person for this project, receiving support from the Digital Archivist, the University Records Manager, and staff Archives Assistants.

The project ran from September 2020–March 2021 and was funded through a grant from the Provincial Archival Development Program (PADP). This funding allowed the Dalhousie University Archives to hire Matheus to focus on the personal archives of Ronald St. John MacDonald, an international law professor and judge. The archival fonds includes 15.64 metres of textual records and other material.

Matheus conducted an archival appraisal and then created and carried out a detailed plan to arrange and describe the fonds. He also rehoused the material in archival quality file folders and boxes. In total, Matheus created 691 file-level descriptions, 25 sub-series level descriptions, four series-level descriptions, and one fonds-level description. He also drafted an archival authority record that describes the life and career of Ronald St. John MacDonald. The archival appraisal and processing project resulted in the deaccessioning of 1.5 metres of textual records.

The finding aid for the Ronald St. John MacDonald fonds is available here: https://findingaids.library.dal.ca/ronald-st-john-macdonalds-fonds

Congratulations to the entire Dalhousie Archives team on the completion of these extensive projects and for winning two well-deserved awards! With thanks to Creighton Barrett and Sarah Stevenson for providing much of the content for this message.

Finding Our History: A Conversation About LGBT Collections and Exhibitions (webinar)

To celebrate LGBT History Month, join our group of panelists for a showcase of 2SLGBTQIA-focused collections, exhibitions, and history projects from across Atlantic Canada. Moderated by Nova Scotia LGBT Seniors’ Archive founder Jacqueline Gahagan, panelists will discuss how these projects enable members of the community to find, access, and interact with information about 2SLGBTQIA history in the region.

  • Meredith J. Batt (they/them) is an archivist at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick and the President of the Queer Heritage Initiative of New Brunswick, an archival initiative which collects the history of 2SLGBTQIA+ people across the province. Their forthcoming co-authored book, Len & Cub: A queer history, explores one of the oldest known photographic records of a same-sex couple in the Maritimes and will be released in April 2022 with Goose Lane Editions.
  • Jacqueline (Jacquie) Gahagan, PhD (they/them) is a medical sociologist working in the areas of mixed methods health promotion and health policy research. Specifically, Dr. Gahagan uses gender-based and intersectional analyses to understand the impacts of health promotion interventions aimed at addressing health inequities faced by marginalized populations, including the LGBTQ populations and populations affected by HIV, HCV, and other STBBIs. Dr. Gahagan is the co-director of the Atlantic Interdisciplinary Research Network: Social Behavioral Aspects of HIV and HCV (AIRN) which is an Atlantic regional network of over 250 researchers, policy makers, and community-based service providers.
  • Daze Jefferies (she/her) is a sixth-generation white settler artist, writer, and researcher born and raised in the Bay of Exploits on the northeast coast of rural Newfoundland. Deeply informed by geographies and histories of trans women (and) sex workers in Atlantic Canada, her research-creation and multidisciplinary projects have been exhibited at Eastern Edge, The Rooms, Unscripted Twillingate, Inverness County Centre for the Arts, and Cape Breton University Art Gallery, as well as performed widely at festivals, theatres, and house shows in St. John’s – including HOLD FAST, Lawnya Vawnya, FemFest, and Out of Earshot. Co-author of Autoethnography and Feminist Theory at the Water’s Edge: Unsettled Islands (2018), she has recent publications in Riddle Fence, Understorey, HELD, The Dalhousie Review, Arc, and Feral Feminisms.
  • Robin Metcalfe (he/him) is a Canadian writer, critic, and curator. He has been active nationally and internationally as a gay activist, journalist, and community historian since the mid-1970s. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in more than sixty magazines, including The Body Politic, and many anthologies. His exhibitions include Queer Looking, Queer Acting: Lesbian and Gay Vernacular (MSVU Art Gallery, 1997; remounted 2014) and Camp Fires (Gardiner Museum, 2014, touring to Montréal, Halifax and Bellevue, WA). He won the 2000 Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-Fiction and was short-listed for a Canadian National Magazine Award in 2004. Halifax Pride named him honorary Grand Marshall in 2010.
  • Rachel Moore (she/her) is a queer archivist residing in Kjipuktuk (Halifax). Through her work as a Research Assistant with the Nova Scotia LGBT Seniors Archive, Rachel is involved in the processing and preservation of Nova Scotia’s LGBT history. She is passionate about protecting this cultural history and providing access for future generations. Rachel received her Master of Library and Information Studies this past May from Dalhousie University’s School of Information Management. During her time at SIM, Rachel served as Programming Co-Chair, and later Conference Co-Chair for the Information Without Borders Conference, where she oversaw the conference’s transition to its online format. She was awarded the 2021 SIM Leadership Award in recognition of this work.
  • Denyse Rodrigues (she/they) practices librarianship at Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Among her responsibilities are coordinating e-learning and library research services, liaising with departments in the Social Sciences including Women’s Studies, and teaching a credit-bearing online information literacy course. Denyse is keenly interested in using digital media and popular culture to open dialogues and help students engage with research.

This event is presented by the Dalhousie Libraries, home of the NS LGBT Seniors’ Archive.

Watch the recording of the webinar. 

MLA Online Handbook: Trial

The Dalhousie Libraries is trialing the recently launched online version of the MLA handbook.  You can access the trial here: https://dal.ca.libguides.com/mlahandbook

The trial ends on November 14, 2021.

Guidance on how to use the Handbook is available here: https://mlahandbookplus.org/pages/how-to-use

Feedback about the MLA Online Handbook can be sent to Library.Collections@Dal.ca

 

Open Access Week Round Up

This year’s theme for Open Access Week is It Matters How We Open Knowledge: building structural equity.  This theme really highlights that making your research open benefits not only our local community but the world — anywhere researchers, professionals, or decision-makers lack the subscriptions necessary to access the research they need.

To celebrate Open Access Week this year, we put together five tips to engage and introduce the Dalhousie University community to ways we can open our work using Dalhousie tools and resources. See below for more information on Open Access Week and quick links to the OA Week tips we featured all week on social media. 

For more information on open access week, visit: http://www.openaccessweek.org/ 

Tip #1: Author’s Rights
https://dal.ca.libguides.com/open_access/2021_Tip1 

Tip #2: Versions of a manuscript and Sherpa Romeo
https://dal.ca.libguides.com/open_access/2021_Tip2 

Tip #3: DalSpace
https://dal.ca.libguides.com/open_access/2021_Tip3 

Tip #4: Gold OA & APCs
https://dal.ca.libguides.com/open_access/2021_Tip4   

Tip #5: Impact of Open Data
https://dal.ca.libguides.com/open_access/2021_Tip5 

   

An evening with Francesca Ekwuyasi (Dal Reads)

Photo by Dario Lozano Thornton.

Join us for a reading and discussion with Francesca Ekwuyasi, the author of this year’s Dal Reads book, Butter Honey Pig Bread. This is event is presented by Dal Reads, Dalhousie’s unity reading program.

The eBook is available to all current students, faculty, and staff of Dalhousie.

This event will be online and is open to members of the public. Please register to receive the link to attend.

Thank you!

RESOLVED: CABI Access Down

RESOLVED: Updated October 5, 12:18 p.m.

We are currently unable to access our CABI (Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International) products (with the exception of CAB Abstracts). The publisher is aware of the problem and is in the process of fixing it.

We apologize for the inconvenience and we appreciate your patience as the issue is resolved.

CAUL-CBUA Research Data Management (RDM) Webinar Series

by Louise Gillis

If you are a faculty member, researcher, or graduate student who wants to know more about Research Data Management  — this webinar series is for you! The CAUL-CBUA Research Data Management (RDM) Webinar Series will teach you everything you need to know about the Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy and how you can be ready to meet the policy requirements.

Session 1 — RDM Basics – What You Need to Know
Date: Thursday, October 7, 2021

Session 2 — Help! I Need a Data Management Plan! Get Started Using the DMP Assistant and More
Date: Thursday, October 21, 2021

Session 3 — Where to Deposit Your Data: Dataverse? FRDR? Other?
Date: Thursday, November 4, 2021

Session 4 — Leveraging Advanced Digital Research Infrastructure to Support Research Data Management
Date: Thursday, November 18, 2021

More information and registration: https://caul-dpsc.github.io/

Sessions are also available in French:

Jeudi 14 octobre: Introduction à la GDR – Ce que vous devez savoir

Jeudi 28 octobre: À l’aide! J’ai besoin d’un plan de gestion de données! Utilisez l’assistant PGD et plus encore

Jeudi 11 novembre (changement de date possible à confirmer en raison d’un conflit d’horaire avec le Jour du souvenir): Où déposer vos données – Dataverse? DFDR? Autre?

Jeudi 25 novembre: Exploiter l’infrastructure de recherche numérique d’avant-garde pour soutenir la gestion des données de recherche

More information and registration: https://caul-dpsc.github.io/

4 Seasons of Reconciliation course for all Dalhousie faculty and staff

As part of Dalhousie’s ongoing commitment to reconciliation, the Dalhousie Libraries is administering a course titled 4 Seasons of Reconciliation which is available to all Dalhousie faculty, staff, and administration. This year, the course is funded by the Faculty of Engineering; responsibility for funding the course will be shared across different faculties and units in future years.

According to Theresa Rajack-Talley, Vice-Provost for Equity and Inclusion: The urgency for us to act on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action has never been more immediate as the horrific uncovering of thousands of unmarked children’s graves at former residential school sites continues across Canada, further amplifying the damage that residential schools have done.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), formed in 2008, was created to work towards a stronger and healthier future by telling the truth about what happened at residential schools and rebuilding and renewing relationships between Indigenous Peoples and Canadian settlers. The process of rebuilding relationships is called reconciliation and it applies to both institutions and individuals. It is an ongoing commitment we all must undertake.

For individuals ready to take action now, the online course 4 Seasons of Reconciliation is a good place to start. The course provides decolonialized education in line with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action. The course is broken down into 10 modules and does not have to be completed in one sitting. It can take approximately 3.5–4.5 hours to complete the course and a certificate is issued upon completion.

“In partnership with the Dal Libraries, we launched this initiative for Engineering faculty and staff in July. We are very pleased to see that it can now be extended to all Dalhousie faculty and staff,” said John Newhook, Dean, Faculty of Engineering.

The course was developed by Reconciliation Education, an e-learning producer of online resources, and the First Nations University of Canada for workplaces and the education sector. An Indigenous Advisory Circle, comprised of Elders, Knowledge Keepers, educators, and members of the First Nations University of Canada, was consulted on the creation of the course.

Register now for the 4 Seasons of Reconciliation course.  

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