New Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick (DMNB) Librarian

April 3, 2017 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

Courtney Boudreau is starting Monday, April 3^rd as the new Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick (DMNB) Librarian, covering the maternity leave of Jackie Phinney. Courtney will be providing research support and instruction services to DMNB students and faculty, and working collaboratively with colleagues at the Kellogg Library, and the Dalhousie Libraries to support initiatives remotely.

She is proud Maritimer (from Saint John, NB) who grew up in Hamilton, Ontario. She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Information and Communication Studies at the University of New Brunswick (Saint John Campus, 2014) and her Master in Library and Information Science degree at the University of Western Ontario (2015).

Courtney has an interest in how elementary and secondary school students’ scholarly research skills and library usage are preparing them for higher education. She is also interested in community outreach, A/V and new media, user experience, privacy and surveillance, the digital divide, open access, and mental health. Courtney sits on the Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL) Communications Committee.

She can be reached at 506-648-5693.

Recalibrating Technology Support in the Classroom

March 29, 2017 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

(by Marlo MacKay, via Dal News)

When technology fails in the classroom, everybody suffers.

A University Senate forum held late last year brought university administrators and academic support units together to provide input on some of the challenges that arise when audio visual and video conferencing technologies don’t function as expected. The basic message: these technologies are critical to fulfilling Dal’s academic mission and supporting learning and teaching.

In response to the feedback gathered at The Future of Dal’s Technology Enabled Learning Environment forum, and as recommended in a review led by Susan Spence Wach, vice-provost planning; and Donna Bourne-Tyson, university librarian; the consolidation of two teams of A/V professionals will result in the new Classroom Technologies unit — increasing capacity to support audio visual equipment in classrooms and video conferencing equipment.

This change, effective April 1, brings the responsibilities of technical support for the physical and virtual classrooms together under one unit, based in the Dalhousie Libraries’ Academic Technology Services (ATS) department. The new unit comprises three staff members from Information Technology Services (ITS) and three staff members from the Centre for Learning & Teaching (CLT).

The unit will be based out of the Dalhousie Libraries as part of ATS (previously named Library IT Services or LITS) which will continue to provide all the services they have been known for, such as Help Desk support, 3D printing, NetID management, Brightspace administration and training, and statistical software licensing and support.

“There is a high level of co-operation among CLT, ITS and the Dal Libraries, and all three will continue to play key roles in integrated planning initiatives related to classroom design, in conjunction with the Provost’s Office and Facilities Management,” says Spence Wach.

Prioritizing user-centric services

“We’re very happy to welcome six experienced Dalhousie staff members to our team,” says Marc Comeau, who will move into the role of ATS director from his current position as director of LITS. “The delivery of A/V support requires more IT knowledge than ever before, and these staff members will be surrounded by other IT professionals in our unit who are also providing critical, user-centric services.”

Employees David George, Jeff Langille, Richard Payne, Graham Denman, Spencer Cantley, and Roger Brush will be moving into the new unit. In addition to the six staff members, there are part-time student assistant positions that will be joining ATS and the Classroom Technologies team.

ATS will receive some additional resources to improve A/V and video conferencing services in the form of training for staff and student assistants, some infrastructure money, and an additional position that did not previously exist at Dalhousie to coordinate video conferencing support. Hiring for that position will take place later this year.

The funding from the administration will have a positive effect on the delivery of these services. A major challenge ATS will face is the significant deferred maintenance of A/V equipment in classrooms, so improvements to the services will at first be incremental, but continuous.

“ATS will develop collaborative relationships with CLT, ITS, MedIT, and Facilities, ensuring a service rooted in best practices. This is a positive change for Dalhousie that faculty will experience first-hand. Students will also feel the benefits of having reliable, functioning technology in the classrooms,” says Bourne-Tyson.

Knowing who to turn to

Early on, the team will be improving the communication between those who install equipment and those who support it, increasing training for full-time and student staff, and streamlining processes to report technology problems. Issues that will be addressed over the longer-term include standardization of equipment, remote monitoring to improve response times and avoid technology failures, and closer integration with the classroom scheduling system Infosilem.

“The biggest improvement that should be felt from the start is that faculty will know where to turn for technical support in the classroom and will feel confident that support will be reliable and effective,” said Comeau.

Working with the provost, vice-provost, planning, and through the Classroom Planning Committee, the Senate Learning & Teaching Committee and the Academic IT Steering Committee, ATS aims to identify challenges earlier by consulting users for new and emerging requirements, and employing strategies such as scheduling regular maintenance of A/V equipment in classrooms.

Digital Preservation, Eh?

February 28, 2017 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

by Alexandra Jokinen

This post originally appeared on the Society of American Archivists blog: https://saaers.wordpress.com/2017/02/14/digital-preservation-eh/

Hello / Bonjour!

Welcome to the Canadian edition of International Perspectives on Digital Preservation. My name is Alexandra Jokinen. I am the new(ish) Digital Archives Intern at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I work closely with the Digital Archivist, Creighton Barrett, to aid in the development of policies and procedures for some key aspects of the University Libraries’ digital archives program—acquisitions, appraisal, arrangement, description, and preservation.

One of the ways in which we are beginning to tackle this very large, very complex (but exciting!) endeavour is to execute digital preservation on a small scale, focusing on the processing of digital objects within a single collection, and then using those experiences to create documentation and workflows for different aspects of the digital archives program.

The collection chosen to be our guinea pig was a recent donation of work from esteemed Canadian ecologist and environmental scientist, Bill Freedman, who taught and conducted research at Dalhousie from 1979 to 2015. The fonds is a hybrid of analogue and digital materials dating from 1988 to 2015. Digital media carriers include: 1 computer system unit, 5 laptops, 2 external hard drives, 7 USB flash drives, 5 zip disks, 57 CDs, 6 DVDs, 67 5.25 inch floppy disks and 228 3.5 inch floppy disks. This is more digital material than the archives is likely to acquire in future accessions, but the Freedman collection acted as a good test case because it provided us with a comprehensive variety of digital formats to work with.

Our first area of focus was appraisal. For the analogue material in the collection, this process was pretty straightforward: conduct macro-appraisal and functional analysis by physically reviewing material. However, (as could be expected) appraisal of the digital material was much more difficult to complete. The archives recently purchased a forensic recovery of evidence device (FRED) but does not yet have all the necessary software and hardware to read the legacy formats in the collection (such as the floppy disks and zip disks), so, we started by investigating the external hard drives and USB flash drives. After examining their content, we were able to get an accurate sense of the information they contained, the organizational structure of the files, and the types of formats created by Freedman. Although, we were not able to examine files on the legacy media, we felt that we had enough context to perform appraisal, determine selection criteria and formulate an arrangement structure for the collection.

The next step of the project will be to physically organize the material. This will involve separating, photographing and reboxing the digital media carriers and updating a new registry of digital media that was created during a recent digital archives collection assessment modelled after OCLC’s 2012 “You’ve Got to Walk Before You Can Run” research report. Then, we will need to process the digital media, which will entail creating disk images with our FRED machine and using forensic tools to analyze the data. Hopefully, this will allow us to apply the selection criteria used on the analogue records to the digital records and weed out what we do not want to retain. During this process, we will be creating procedure documentation on accessioning digital media as well as updating the archives’ accessioning manual.

The project’s final steps will be to take the born-digital content we have collected and ingest it using Archivematica to create Archival Information Packages for storage and preservation and accessed via the Archives Catalogue and Online Collections.

So there you have it! We have a long way to go in terms of digital preservation here at Dalhousie (and we are just getting started!), but hopefully our work over the next several months will ensure that solid policies and procedures are in place for maintaining a trustworthy digital preservation system in the future.

This internship is funded in part by a grant from the Young Canada Works Building Careers in Heritage Program, a Canadian federal government program for graduates transitioning to the workplace.

___

Alexandra Jokinen has a Master’s Degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University in Toronto. Previously, she has worked as an Archivist at the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto and completed a professional practice project at TIFF Film Reference Library and Special Collections.

Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Jennifer MacIsaac Completes Certificate in Museum Studies

February 8, 2017 Marlo MacKay 2 Comments

Jennifer MacIsaac.

In 2009, Jennifer MacIsaac was asked to take care of the Agricola Museum, Archives, and Special Collections at the MacRae Library on the Agricultural Campus. As a cataloguer with a diploma in Library and Information Technology, she thought it seemed like a close fit; the collections were similar to what she worked with every day, the materials were just older.

While the management of archives and museums is comparable to library practices, some aspects of the work are worlds apart. “With 30 years of accumulated artifacts, records, and book collections to sort through, policies to update and create, services and programs to develop, and a community to engage, I was soon feeling overwhelmed!” said Jennifer. Luckily, Jennifer is no longer feeling overwhelmed and library users can expect great exhibits and well cared for artifacts thanks to the training she has undergone since then.

Elaine MacInnis, Head of the MacRae Library and Associate University Librarian, Library Services, suggested that Jennifer enrol in the Council of Nova Scotia Archives (CNSA) core curriculum. CNSA is the body that promotes good archival practices throughout the province. They offer six two-day courses in archival studies; all six courses must be completed and the assignments passed to receive an Archival Certificate of Completion. Jennifer finished the program and received her certification in 2014.

The Agricola Collection.

Then, a conservator suggested to Jennifer that she look into the Association of Nova Scotia Museums (ANSM) program in Museum Studies to complement her archival certification. Elaine MacInnis and University Archivist and Associate University Librarian, Research and Scholarly Communication Michael Moosberger were wholly supportive of Jennifer developing these skills to better manage the 400–500 artifacts in the MacRae Library. “Management of museums is as different to libraries as archives are, if not more. ANSM offers eight core two-day courses in Museum Studies in a three-year cycle. In 2014 I began working towards my certification and finished last year,” said Jennifer.

In all, Jennifer has had training in arrangement and description, Rules for Archival Description (RAD), preservation, acquisition, appraisal and accessioning, access and reference, museums and community (engagement and responsibilities), museum management and governance, public programming, collections management and curatorship, exhibitions, facilities management, and marketing and revenue generation. “Participating in these programs has made an incredible impact on my knowledge of archival practices,” said Jennifer. She has also had the opportunity to network and collaborate with new colleagues, some now mentors, in the cultural heritage sector.

In 2013, the MacRae Library underwent a renovation. The Agricola collection was moved from one small room alone to also be housed in a second larger room that could accommodate proper shelving. “This was a fantastic opportunity to work closely with Michael’s staff from the Dalhousie Archives who came to help with the reorganization. We’ve since expanded to a third room for office and reference areas, digitization, and to house the audio visual and photograph collections,” said Jennifer.

Welcome Lachlan, the new Copyright Services Coordinator for Dalhousie Libraries

January 10, 2017 Marlo MacKay 3 Comments

We are pleased to welcome Lachlan MacLeod to the staff of the Dalhousie Libraries, effective January 3. Lachlan will have a busy schedule, including ensuring all copyrighted materials have been cleared prior to production or use, working closely with the eReserves team on providing library resources to students through Brightspace, responding to a wide array of inquiries from Dalhousie faculty, staff and students on copyright-related matters, and promoting open access resources.

There is a large component of his position that will be educational in nature, working with the Copyright & Humanities Librarian in delivering presentations to various faculties and departments, providing updates on developments in the copyright landscape in Canada, and demonstrating how the Copyright Office can assist faculty and staff in maintaining compliance with current copyright legislation.

“The Dalhousie Libraries Copyright Office assists all members of the university community in meeting their shared obligation to respect the rights of copyright holders in their use of material for research, teaching and learning,” says Elaine MacInnis, Associate University Librarian, Library Services. “Lachlan will be a valuable addition to the Copyright Team, bringing with him relevant experience, expertise, familiarity with the Dalhousie community and a willingness to work with our community to ensure everyone benefits from the wealth of scholarly material available.”

Lachlan is a graduate of both King’s and Dalhousie. He holds a Master of Arts in sociology, and his thesis focused on qualitative comparisons between practices of Halifax artists and national copyright policy. In addition to his background in copyright research, Lachlan was previously employed at Dalhousie as a student assistant in the sociology department, and in two positions at the Atlantic Research Data Centre, located in the Killam Library.

Lachlan is looking forward to answering questions from staff, faculty, and students about how copyright affects them. “Copyright can seem dull or restrictive at first glance,” says Lachlan. “But, it touches many aspects of our lives, from entertainment media to academic work. With a robust knowledge of copyright, faculty, staff, and students can get more out of their work. I’m excited to teach more people about copyright policy, and pass on an enthusiasm for what is possible.”

Lachlan will be based out of the Copyright Office, which is on the fifth floor of the Killam Library. If you have questions about copyright, contact copyright.office@dal.ca or (902)494-4346.

Bringing joy to a common seasonal chore: the Snow Shovel Bhangra

January 3, 2017 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

Just before Christmas, the Maritime Bhangra group went viral, this time to capture another essential Maritime experience: snow shovelling. The group had their first viral video just a few months ago featuring bhangra dancers on the rocks at Peggy’s Cove.

The group posted the Snow Shovel Bhangra on December 15 and it was viewed more than 25 million times in only six days. Filmed using an iPhone, in minus 30-degree weather while gripping dollar store toy shovels (for their lightness and ease to dance with), the dancers wore matching Dalhousie T-shirts that were sourced from what troupe members already owned. “We wanted them to be in matching shirts and that was the only shirt we had three of,” says Hasmeet Singh Chandok, spokesperson for the group and navigator at the Dalhousie Libraries. “We like to keep our videos simple, using resources we already have or can easily get,” he says.

Hasmeet (spokesperson) and Kunwardeep (choreographer), of the Maritime Bhangra Group. Photo by Nick Pearce, Dalhousie.

Three members of the troupe, Kunwardeep Singh (Dal alumnus), Bikramjit Singh (Mohawk College alumnus), and Davinder Singh (SMU alumnus) are in the video, which opens with them shoveling snow in an apartment building parking lot. They then toss the snow playfully into the air and turn around to face the camera, incorporating the shovels into their dance. Kunwardeep, the dancer in the middle, and fondly known online as #guywithlongbeard, does all of the group’s choreography.

“We did this video to raise awareness about ALS,” says Hasmeet. “The local ALS charity had been in touch with us about doing something with them and that is why we made this video. Within two days, it had raised more than $4,000 for ALS,” he says. At the end is a call to action, asking people to donate to the ALS Society of Canada if they liked the video. ALS is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. It is terminal, with most people dying two to five years after being diagnosed.

As spokesperson for the group, Hasmeet can’t even keep track of which news outlets he’s spoken to in the days just after the video was posted, but he does know that NBC, BBC, CTV, SBS (Australia), the Globe and Mail, Global TV and the Huffington Post have all covered the story. It has also made big news in India, which is where Hasmeet and all the members of the Maritime Bhangra Group were born and raised.

“Some people are calling us ‘internet superstars’ but we are still just regular people with 9–5 jobs,” says Hasmeet. The success of their videos continues to surprise Hasmeet, and he is still making sense of why his dance troupe’s videos have touched such a chord with the world. “Perhaps people can relate to us because we try to keep the videos simple. We make videos with a message of embracing diversity and giving to others. Many people think that what they know is not big enough to contribute, but whatever you know just do it and put yourself out there, and you never know how big of a difference you can make,” he says.

The troupe also released a special video just in time for Christmas.

New Working Group: Training & Development

December 12, 2016 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

The Dal Libraries have formed a new working group based on a recommendation from the external review that was conducted in the winter of 2016.

This new working group has representation from a wide spectrum of Dal Libraries staff and their tasks will be to:

broadly survey staff needs,
identify a short set of annual training and development priorities with close links to our mission,
support a combination of technical skills training,
and support broad-based development opportunities.

Whenever possible, they will leverage campus resources to accomplish these tasks.

Thank you to all the staff who are taking on this challenge, and to Sandy Dwyer, for setting up the group and leading on these important initiatives. Their first meeting will be in January.

New Dal Libraries Committee: Diversity & Inclusion

December 12, 2016 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

The Dal Libraries have a new Diversity & Inclusion Committee. This committee has been formed from a recommendation in the Belong Report. The committee’s role will be to better understand and support proactive engagement to improve inclusion and diversity.

Thanks to Sandy Dwyer for setting up this committee and leading on this important initiative, and to all the members of this committee. Their first meeting will be in January.

Creighton Barrett Presents in Germany

November 18, 2016 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

Creighton Barrett, Digital Archivist at the Dal Archives, recently spoke at a Scientific Archives Workshop held at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. The workshop was organized by Anne-Flore Laloë, Archivist at EMBL.

The workshop brought together about 40 archivists from Europe and the USA who are “responsible for capturing, preserving and sharing the advances of science as they are happening and changing our understanding of the world around us” (from workshop website). Creighton was the only speaker from Canada.

His presentation was called Beyond the research data: acquiring and preserving the personal archives of Canadian scientists. He presented three case studies:

Elisabeth Mann Borgese: http://findingaids.library.dal.ca/elisabeth-mann-borgese-fonds
Ransom Myers: http://findingaids.library.dal.ca/ransom-myers-fonds
Bill Freedman: Recent acquisition, no finding aid yet

Creighton talked about some of the general challenges with acquiring and preserving scientific archives and then presented a model (see the diagram below, click on it to enlarge) that integrates research data management (RDM) activities with digital preservation activities defined in two ISO standards: the “Open Archival Information System” for digital preservation and the “Producer-archive interface — methodology abstract standard” for acquisition of digital material.

barrett_rdmpersonalarchivespaimasoias_diagram_v1-0

Research data management + personal archives + PAIMAS + OAIS (click to enlarge)

The model suggests that personal archival material can be considered during the process of identifying and transferring research data that requires permanent preservation. If digital preservation systems are scaled up to accommodate large sets of archival research data, the infrastructure will be able to accommodate the additional acquisition and preservation of personal digital archival material that helps give important context to the research data.

Creighton’s slides are available in DalSpace.

Meet the Dalhousie Libraries Resources Team

November 15, 2016 Marlo MacKay Leave a Comment

by Allison Fulford,
Associate University Librarian, Resources & Discovery

We would like to introduce you to the Resources Team at the Dal Libraries. These staff members plan for, purchase, organize, and deploy the print and electronic books, journals, databases, and all the other varied materials provided by the Dalhousie Libraries. You may not always see these staff, but they work diligently to make sure you can find and access all those resources you need to study and to research successfully at Dalhousie.

This team performs its magic in all five of the Dal Libraries, working with Managers Karen Chandler, Gail Fraser, and Alice Stover, Collections Strategy Librarian Heather MacFadyen, and Associate University Librarian, Resources & Discovery, Allison Fulford.

Whether you stop by Libraries to pick up a print book or use a journal article database to download an article, chances are very high that someone on this team was involved in getting that information to you!

Front row (l-r): Sarah Davis, Debbie Bangay, Lisa Drew, Jennifer MacIsaac. 2nd row (l-r): Audrey LaPierre, Anne Gaetz, Denise Irving, Allison Fulford. 3rd row (l-r): Gina Coates, Heather MacFadyen, Linda Saunders, Verna Mingo. 4th row (l-r); Linda Aiken, Penny David, Andre Richard. 5th row (l-r): Echo Dyan, Mollie Thompson, Jason Lee, Karen Chandler, Alice Stover. 6th row (l-r): Paul Duffy, Kyoo Lee, Andrew Wood, Karen Tarum. Missing: Gail Fraser, Erin Winchcombe, Asmeret Gheabreab, Carolene Robertson, Darlene Hazel, Susan Hagen.

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