UPDATE, Sat., Jan 18, 11:35 a.m.: The Wallace McCain Learning Commons is closed Sat., Jan 18 and Sun., Jan 19 due to a burst pipe. The closest alternative library space is the Killam, open from 10 am–midnight on Sat & Sun
Welcome, Deborah Hemming
We are pleased to introduce Deborah Hemming, our new limited term Learning & Instruction Librarian. Deborah will be at the Dal Libraries until October 31.
Deborah has worked as a librarian at Simon Fraser University and as a research and innovation coordinator at Acadia. In 2016/17, Deborah worked as a reference assistant in the Killam Library while she completed her Master of Library and Information Studies degree. Deborah also holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters of Arts, both in English.
Deborah is a published author. Her novel Throw Down Your Shadows is published by Vagrant Press and will be released in June of this year.
Please join us in welcoming Deborah!
Welcome, Louise Gillis
We are pleased to introduce Louise Gillis, our new limited term Data Librarian. Louise will be at the Dal Libraries until October 31.
Louise has worked as a research librarian in Australia and as a bookmobile librarian in Nova Scotia. She has also worked as a research assistant, a summer reading program coordinator, and an executive assistant. She has experience with data management, developing collections, building resources, and preparing and delivering instructional material. In addition to holding her Master of Library and Information Science, Louise holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology.
Over the last fifteen years, Louise has lived and worked in five different countries, developing strong communication skills and an appreciation for diversity.
Please join us in welcoming Louise!
Dalhousie University Libraries Joins Scholars Portal Dataverse
Dalhousie University, along with a number of members of the Council of Atlantic University Libraries (CAUL) and other universities across Canada, has entered in to a Service Agreement with the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) to host an institutional Dataverse on the Scholars Portal Dataverse. Dataverse is an open-source web application used to deposit, share and cite research data. It was developed by the Institution for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University.
Why deposit data in Dataverse?
There are many benefits for a researcher to depositing data in the Dataverse repository. Research Data Management Librarian Erin MacPherson suggests that Dataverse can help you to effectively manage your data and save time. “There are useful features such as the ability to assign roles and permissions and licenses. Publishing your data in a data repository helps to meet emerging grant and funding requirements. Finally, publishing your data can help increase research visibility,” observes MacPherson.
Benefits of an Institutional Repository for Dalhousie University on Scholars Portal Dataverse
Dean of Libraries Donna Bourne-Tyson notes, “One of the biggest benefits with having an Institutional Dataverse on the SP Dataverse is that we are contributing to the effort for a robust national data repository. We already have a strong collective effort to develop research data management tools and resources through the Canadian Association of Research Libraries’ Portage Network, and this will further assist these endeavors.”
Some of the other benefits include:
- Institutional Dataverses (Dalhousie has its own Institutional Dataverse on the site).
- Canadian data hosting
- Powerful visualization tools
- Persistent identifiers (DataCite Canada DOI minting)
- Open discovery on the web (Google SHARE and FRDR harvesting)
- Bilingual Interface (English and French)
What happens to the Dalhousie’s existing Dataverse?
The Dalhousie Libraries currently hosts a local instance of Dataverse; however, from this point onwards, all new datasets and users will be directed to use Dalhousie’s institutional Dataverse hosted on the Scholars Portal Dataverse site. Over the coming year, the data management team will be in touch with existing users about migrating their data to the Dalhousie Institutional repository hosted on Scholars Portal Dataverse site. A decision will be made about maintaining a locally hosted instance at the end of the year.
Want to learn more?
If you are interested in using Dataverse to publish your data or would like a demonstration, please contact data.management@dal.ca and have a look at some of our training materials:
- Explore Dataverse website: https://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/
- Scholars Portal Dataverse FAQ: https://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/
- Dataverse User Guide: https://learn.scholarsportal.info/all-guides/dataverse/
Brightspace Bootcamp for Faculty, Instructors & TAs January 2020
Classes are about to start; join the Dal Libraries for Brightspace Bootcamp. Drop in for a session or stay for the whole morning. Bring your questions! We’ll also have a regular Brightspace Drop-in session on Thursday, January 2 from 12–1:30 p.m. in Room 3601.
Friday, January 3
9 a.m.–12 p.m.
Room 2600 (LINC), Killam Memorial Library
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9–10 a.m. Brightspace Refresher
Would you like some help optimizing your course space? Maybe you need to add a TA into Brightspace. Come to our Brightspace refresher hour to get set up for your fall courses.
10–11 a.m. Collaborate/Panopto
Learn all the tips and tricks on running a successful webinar, recording it, and adding it to your course space.
11 a.m.–12 p.m. Urkund and New Features in Brightspace
Urkund is plagiarism detection software that you can add to your course space. Use it for individual files or for an entire assignment folder. We will also feature tools such as Assignment Annotation & Quick Eval.
Artist Michelle Sylliboy at Dal in January for Two Events
Interdisciplinary artist and poet Michelle Sylliboy (Mi’kmaq/L’nu) was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised on her traditional L’nuk territory in We’koqmaq, Cape Breton. While living on the traditional, unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, Sylliboy completed a BFA at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and a Masters in Education from Simon Fraser University. She is currently a PhD candidate in Simon Fraser University’s Philosophy of Education program, where she is working to reclaim her original written komqwej’wikasikl language. Her collection of photography and Mi’kmaq (L’nuk) hieroglyphic poetry, Kiskajeyi—I Am Ready, was published by Rebel Mountain Press in 2019.
Artist Talk
Michelle will read from her new book Kiskajeyi—I Am Ready and talk about the work she has been doing with the komqwej’wikasikl (hieroglyphic) Mi’kmaw writing system.
Wednesday, January 15/6:30 p.m.
MacMechan Auditorium,
Killam Memorial Library
Komqwejwi’kasikl (hieroglyphic) Birch Bark Workshop
Michelle will lead this art workshop. Art supplies will be provided. Space is limited, please register: https://dal.libcal.com/event/3530571
Thursday, January 16/4 p.m.
Indigenous Student Centre,
1325 Edward Street
Presented by Dal Reads in support of this year’s title: Song of Rita Joe: Autobiography of a Mi’kmaw Poet.
Holiday Hours
Most of our locations are now running on holiday hours. We will close at noon on December 24 and reopen on January 2, except for the Killam Library, which will be open for reduced hours on December 28 and 29. Please check the hours widget on libraries.dal.ca for exact hours before heading to any of our locations this week. Happy holidays from all of us at the Dalhousie Libraries! 
Proquest Scheduled Server Maintenance: Dec 20/21
Due to scheduled maintenance, ProQuest Ebook Central will be unavailable on Friday, December 20, from 10 p.m. to Saturday, December 21 at 8 a.m. (AST). We apologize for the inconvenience.
Public Lecture: Academic Libraries and the Digital Culture: How Should We Be Preparing for the Future?
Dr. Guylaine Beaudry is Vice-Provost, Digital Strategy and University Librarian at Concordia University. She led the major renovation of the Webster Library and the transformation of the chapel of the Grey Nuns motherhouse into a reading room.
Since August 2017, she has been leading the university-wide digital strategy. She was previously Executive Director of Érudit (www.erudit.org), a publishing platform for humanities and social sciences scholarly books and journals. She wrote many publications on scholarly publishing, notably, the books La communication scientifique et le numérique (Hermès/Lavoisier, Paris); Le nouveau monde numérique et les revues scientifiques (Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal [PUM] and La Découverte, Paris, France), that was translated and published by University of Calgary Press (Scholarly Journals in the New Digital World); and Profession : bibliothécaire (PUM).
She was recently elected member of the Royal Society of Canada and served in 2014 on its Expert Panel on the status and future of libraries and archives in Canada. She holds a doctorate in history of the book from École pratique des hautes études (Paris). Her thesis is entitled “Scholarly communications and the digital revolution: Analysis of a mutation period from a historical perspective”.
Wednesday November 27, 4 p.m.
Room 3089, Rowe Management Building
Reception with light refreshments to follow.
Presented by the School of Information Management and Dalhousie Libraries.
Increasing Access to the First World War Records in the Dalhousie Archives
by Mitchell Jabalee
I am a second-year student in Dalhousie’s Masters in Library and Information Studies (MLIS/MI) program as well as working as a Dalhousie Libraries student intern in the Archives. This semester I have been working through a self-directed reading course based around the subject of digitization in archives under the supervision of Michael Moosberger, the Associate University Librarian Archives, Special Collections and Records Management; and University Archivist.
As part of my course, I have been working on the digitization of a selection of First World War material. I chose to work with these records because the subject is one that is of great interest to me as well as an area I have spent much time studying, dating back to my final year of my undergraduate degree in history, writing my honours thesis at Cape Breton University and working in the CBU’s Beaton Institute.
Since I began studying the First World War it has become a great passion of mine. I saw my reading course not only as an opportunity to practice digitization and become more familiar with the functions of an archives but also as a way to increase access to the Dalhousie Archives’ First World War records by making them digitally available through their online catalogue, AtoM.
Digitization has become a common feature of archives in today’s world. Digitization is the process of creating digital copies of analog records with the end goal of making them more widely available online. Through this process, archives are able to greatly increase the breadth of access for their holdings.
A tent hospital in Argues, France with officers tents in the background through the trees.
The work that I have done this semester has included digitizing a selection of First World War records, filling in holes of collections that had files that had not yet been digitized. In this manner, I conducted a review and scanned through the archives’ holdings of First World War records, looking for material that did not have any digital objects attached to them already. This provided me with a starting point for selecting material to digitize, to ensure I was not duplicating work that had already been done. What I ended up with was a selection of material from different collections that had not been digitized.
A number of digitized items have come from the Samuel Balcom fonds that contained photos of soldiers at Stormcliff, England (1914), tenting encampments at Argues, France, German prisoners of war in Argues, photos of Captain James A. Murray and Batman (not the Caped Crusader) and other papers relating to the Dalhousie No. 7 Overseas Stationary Hospital, which was started in the fall of 1915 in response to a need for qualified medical personnel. Additionally, I digitized other items from smaller collections including notes relating to the young Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky who was imprisoned in an Amherst internment camp in 1917; photographs of military personnel Oscar Donovan and Laura Hubley, as well as a message written in French from French Marshall Philip Pétain, addressed to Oscar Donovan, a Nova Scotian who served as a lieutenant with the Canadian Army Medical Corps during the First World War, relating to his service during the war.
Oscar Donovan, a Nova Scotian who served as a lieutenant with the Canadian Army Medical Corps.
The Dalhousie University Archives is home to many amazing archival records that document the University’s and Canada’s involvement in the First World War. First, Samuel Balcom fonds (MS-2-128). Balcom was a well-known Halifax businessman and politician who established the MacLeod-Balcom Ltd. (later Balcom-Chittick Ltd.) retail and wholesale business as well as serving in both world wars. During the First World War, he served with the Dalhousie University Medical Unit and in the Second World War, he served as Officer Commanding, Medical Stores (1942-43) as well as the Chief Medical Stores Inspection Officer (1944-45).
Another excellent collection is the Robert A. Logan fonds (MS-2-580). Contained in this collection are documents relating to his studies of language, his time as a German prisoner of war during the First World War as well as his publications among other records. Logan served with the Royal British Flying Corps and was later shot down in an aerial attack led by the notorious Baron von Richtofen, the “Red Baron.” Logan survived being shot down (and the war) but was captured and taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans.
During this month of remembrance for Canada’s military, take a moment to remember the brave men and women that have fought and died for our country. Take some time to reflect on the importance of this history and visit an archive like the Dalhousie University Archives to explore some of this rich archival material. Records of this nature can give amazing insights into what the First World War was like, to see into the lives of the men and women who served so long ago.