The Dalhousie Libraries’ Manager of eResources Access & Maintenance, Gail Fraser, was recently profiled in Springer’s The Library Life. Learn more about the work that Gail does with eResources at the Dalhousie Libraries: http://www.springer.com/gp/librarians/the-library-life
Mollie started working at the Dalhousie Libraries in September 2015. Before working here, she catalogued special projects as a student intern at Saint Mary’s, did records management for the Nova Scotia Department of Health, and worked at NSCAD University for three years in various roles such as circulation, interlibrary loans, serials, and cataloguing.
Mollie is a graduate of the NSCC Library Information & Technology program, and she is now pursuing a Bachelor of Arts with a minor in Music at Dalhousie. In her free time, she enjoys playing the saxophone and piano at her church and other local events. She’s looking forward to enriching her musical skills through Dalhousie’s Music Program.
Although Mollie is very specialized in the area of cataloguing, she particularly enjoys interacting with students and assisting them to locate resources. “I come from a family with eight Dalhousie Alumni! With that much Dal lineage, I am very excited to join the Dalhousie team,” says Mollie. Mollie’s homebase will be the Killam Library but she is available to “float” among the other Dalhousie Libraries when her help is needed.
Gina Coates is a graduate of the Library and Information Technology program at the Nova Scotia Community College. Before becoming the Sexton Library Evening and Weekend Supervisor in August 2015, Gina volunteered at the Sexton Library, and worked in temporary positions at the Sexton, Killam, and Kellogg Libraries.
Gina’s main duties include working with the team at the Sexton Library and supporting the everyday operation of the library in Access Services, Document Delivery, and Resources. She will also “float” among the other Dalhousie Libraries when her help is needed.
“It’s been such a great experience working at the Dalhousie Libraries these past few years and now as a full-time employee I’m looking forward to what the future will bring!” says Gina.
Andrew Wood is a Dalhousie alumnus, having graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Studies in 2006. He stayed in the Theatre Department as a teaching assistant from 2007 to 2015 in various Film Studies courses.
Last year, Andrew graduated from NSCC’s Library & Information Technology program. Before becoming a library services assistant at Dalhousie, he worked at the Dal Libraries doing Document Delivery, Access Services, shelving, and Novanet LiveHelp.
Andrew’s homebase library is the Killam, but he is available to “float” among the other Dalhousie Libraries when help is needed. His main focus will be resources (cataloguing and acquisitions-related work), Access Services at the Killam Library Service Point, and digital initiatives and scholarly communication.
Andrew brings a lot of customer service experience to his role at the Dalhousie Libraries, having worked in insurance and retail sales, customer service, and visual merchandising. As a volunteer, he created a classification system, a cataloguing manual, and a library for the Dartmouth Heritage Museum – cataloguing over 800 books since 2014. This year he is the volunteer entertainment coordinator for the Atlantic Provinces Library Association’s 2016 conference.
In his spare time, Andrew enjoys film noir, genealogy research, and travelling. He’s been to Thailand, New Orleans, and Mexico, to name a few places. “While completing my degree at Dalhousie, I knew I was a part of something special. To continue my relationship by making my career here is truly a joy,” he says.
Seungkyoo has worked in administration and customer service for more than ten years in Korea and Canada. She holds a Bachelor of Economics and an International Commerce Degree from Sejong University in Seoul, South Korea. In 2014, Seungkyoo obtained a Master’s degree of Information and Library Science from the University of Montreal, where she lived for nine years.
Since then, she has worked in the library at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography and at Halifax Public Libraries. In January, Seungkyoo joined the Dalhousie Libraries’ team. Seungkyoo will perform duties in the areas of course reserves, resources, and circulation at the Killam Library; in addition she will “float” among the other Dalhousie Libraries when her help is needed.
“I am excited, enthused, and highly motivated to establish myself in a productive work relationship with the team at the Dalhousie Libraries. My past library experience and being trilingual in English, French, and Korean will positively benefit the team and enhance customer service,” says Seungkyoo.
Over the next week, we’ll be profiling some of the newest members of the Dalhousie Libraries staff. We start today with a profile about Jason Lee.
Jason first came to Halifax in 2006, and studied English at Saint Mary’s. He then returned to his native Korea where he complete his Master’s in Library Science degree. He spent some time working in a university library, and was a project manager for a company that builds library programs like Primo. He also worked as a program tester, user trainer, and overseas presenter for the company, travelling to Lithuania, Malaysia, and China.
Jason came back to Canada in 2012 and worked at Pier 21 as a reference assistant. During that time, he participated in Pier 21’s Welcome Home to Canada program, which gave him the opportunity work at the Killam Library for ten Wednesdays.
Last February, Jason joined the staff at the Dalhousie Libraries. He is now the evening/weekend supervisor at the Sexton Library and he will “float” among the other Dalhousie Libraries when his help is needed. In addition to supervising student assistants and all the activities at the Access Services desk, he does cataloguing and end-processing, such as barcoding and labelling books.
“I’m really happy to be back at the Dal Libraries,” says Jason. In his spare time, he enjoys exploring Halifax and the Maritimes with his wife. Jason’s spare time is short these days, though, having recently become a father; his son is three months old. Congratulations, Jason!
Creighton Barrett, the Digital Archivist for the Dalhousie Libraries, and Peter Dykhuis, Director/Curator of the Dalhousie Art Gallery, have curated an exhibition about artist-run culture in Halifax. The exhibit will run in the Dalhousie Art Gallery (6101 University Avenue) from January 22 until April 17, with an opening reception on Thursday, January 21 at 7 p.m.
Mariah Blackmore, a Dalhousie Libraries’ intern who is based in the Dalhousie Archives, will be providing archival reference service in the gallery on Fridays from 12–4. Brennan Dempsey, a graduate student in the History Department, will be providing reference services on Tuesdays from 12–4.
Special thanks to Dalhousie Libraries staff members Dianne Landry and Kelly Casey who have provided assistance throughout the project, and to Shirley Vail who scanned a variety of material from both of these archival fonds.
Here are the full details about the exhibit:
Curated by Creighton Barrett, Digital Archivist, Dalhousie University
Archives, and Peter Dykhuis, Director/Curator, Dalhousie Art Gallery
OPENING RECEPTION Thursday 21 January at 7 PM
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Canadian artists began to self-organize and establish independent spaces for creating and presenting contemporary art. These spaces were called “parallel galleries” or “alternative spaces” and are now known as artist-run centres. Halifax is home to some of the oldest artist-run centres in the country: between 1970 and 1975, Charlotte Townsend-Gault organized the artist-run Mezzanine Gallery at NSCAD. In 1972, a group of female artists established the Inventions Gallery, but the gallery closed after a fire in 1973. A few former members of Inventions Gallery collaborated to found Eye Level Gallery in 1974. The burgeoning interest in video and installation art led to the establishment of Centre for Art Tapes (CFAT) in 1978.
The emergence of artist-run culture is part of a larger historical narrative of 1960s counterculture, cultural policy debates, and widespread interest in communications and technology. This exhibition explores the formative years of artist-run culture in Halifax, from 1970 through the mid-1980s, by presenting posters and invitations from the Mezzanine Gallery fonds, Eyelevel Gallery fonds, and the Centre for Art Tapes fonds in an integrated chronology. The order is periodically disrupted by thematic groupings of textual records and ephemera clustered around quotations from these early archival documents that capture the growing pains and aspirations of this nascent culture.
“Why are we saving All these artist publications + Other Galleries stuffs?” is the only question scrawled on a list of Eyelevel Gallery members present at a board meeting sometime in 1979. There is no record of an ensuing conversation (unless it remains to be discovered among the linear metres of administrative records). The exhibition will also feature a temporary Archives Room with the archives of Eyelevel Gallery and the Centre for Art Tapes presented in the way in which they are permanently stored in the Dalhousie University Archives. These materials will be available for supervised consultation on Tuesdays and Fridays from 12 to 4 p.m. Visitors are invited to perform research in the gallery and craft their own answer to this everlasting question.
Eyelevel Gallery and the Centre for Art Tapes have been invited to present contemporary programming alongside this historical retrospective, which complements the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia’s exhibition The Last Art College: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design 1968-1978.
Alanna McLellan comes to the Dalhousie Libraries all the way from Vancouver, BC!
She attended Simon Fraser University where she earned her Bachelor’s Degree studying History and Humanities and a Certificate in Liberal Arts
“Prior to moving out to Nova Scotia, I had an internship at the SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and worked as a library assistant at a public library,” says Alanna. “From these experiences, I knew I was pursuing the right career path in the field of information.
Alanna enrolled in the MLIS program because she has a passion for helping connect people with the information they need and want.
“I was intrigued by the MLIS program at Dalhousie University in particular because of its placement within the Faculty of Management, and its course content that covers traditional and non-traditional aspects of the information field,” says Alanna. “I also wanted to live and experience a different part of Canada, and Halifax was a city of interest with its east coast culture, while still being near an ocean.”
This Summer Alanna helped organize the library after extensive renovations in late spring. She also provided research assistance at the reference desk and worked on several projects including: designing posters and handouts, a new virtual tour of the library, processing and cataloguing donations, and helped with the migration of the librarians’ subject guides on the LibGuides platform.
“The experience at Sexton Design and Technology Library and the MLIS program has widened my perspective on what I hope to do after graduation. I continue to be passionate about public librarianship, but my interest in working in academic libraries has also grown enormously this past year,” says Alanna. “This is an exciting field to be a part of, and as I enter my final year, I am looking forward to different opportunities as I continue to learn more about the challenges and innovations in the information field.”
Michelle comes to us from Edmonton, Alberta. She has a Bachelor of Arts with a major in English from the University of Alberta.
She chose Dalhousie mainly with location in mind—“I wanted to see what life was like on the east coast, to expand my theory of mind and learn more about the fullness of this country. Additionally, the focus of Dalhousie’s MLIS program on management alongside more classic skills appealed to me because of its wider situational applicability,” says Michelle.
Over the summer, she has been working on several different projects, but they all share roots in collections management. Working with Kat Felix, the other Killam Intern, a bookmark has been created which explains the meaning of the Library of Congress call numbers and which floor of the Killam each letter is on. She’s also assisted in the move from Libguides V1 to V2.
“I’m not exactly sure what I would like to do after graduation–I’m hoping this final year of studies will help me focus my passion–but I am finding myself gravitating towards digital collections, curation, preservation and all the technical skills that go along with those areas,” says Michelle.
Kat Felix is originally from Atholville, New Brunswick. Prior to coming to Dalhousie for the MLIS program, she studied anthropology at St. Thomas University, before graduating with a BA Honours in Spanish from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.
Kat chose Dalhousie because “it’s a university with a world class reputation that still allows me to study close to home.”
In addition to reference, this summer Kat has been working on a variety of collections tasks and updating LibGuides. Kat and her colleague Michelle Boychuk also designed a new library bookmark to assist patrons with finding materials in the Killam Library.
“My current interests are collections management, library instruction, open access, and government information,” says Kat. “After graduation, I’m hoping to find work in an academic or special library that allows me to pursue these interests.”
