Submitted by Marlo McKay, Communications Coordinator, Dalhousie Libraries:

Dalhousie Libraries Staff Changes

• Norbert Addo has been hired as a permanent Help Desk Technician in the Killam Library. He first started working there 2014 while he was a student, providing IT assistance to students and faculty alike.
• Leah Unicomb started as the new Manager of Library Services at the MacRae Library on July 4. Leah is responsible for the daily management of the library including staff, services, and facilities.
• Lucy Kiester has been hired as the new 10 month limited term Instruction and Reference Services Librarian in the W. K. Kellogg Health Sciences Library.
• Hannah Steeves has been hired as the new limited term Instructional and Reference Services Librarian in the Sir James Dunn Law Library.
• We recently said goodbye to Copyright Services Coordinator John Yolkowski. We wish him well in his new role at SMU.

Service Enhancement for GIS & Data Services

The GIS Centre and other data services at the Dalhousie Libraries have been brought together with the goal of supporting a wider variety of teaching, learning, and research activities. Leading this activity will be the new Coordinator of GIS & Data Services, Gwen MacNairn. Gwen brings her impressive record of the provision of library services, experience in the development and oversight of staff training, and her knowledge of ESRI and GIS applications to this new system-wide role that began August 15. Gwen has a strong service orientation, having worked for the past fifteen years as the Computer Science Librarian for the Faculty of Computer Science, and most recently as the Assistant Head of the Killam Memorial Library. She is also the liaison librarian for the Medical Sciences program, and spends her time in the Kellogg and Killam Libraries in this capacity. Click here for full details.

Dalhousie and Halifax Public Libraries Team Up to Purchase Video Difference Film Collection

 The carefully curated collection at Video Difference, a landmark video rental shop in Halifax, has long been important to Dal’s Film Studies program. When Video Difference announced it was closing in August, some Dalhousie faculty began to work quickly in an effort to try and purchase some of Video Difference’s collection. Deciding to join forces, Halifax Public Libraries and Dalhousie purchased approximately 5,500 titles from the Video Difference DVD collection. The collection will be housed jointly in the Killam Memorial Library and at Halifax Public Libraries. Dal’s portion of the purchase amounts to over 1,000 titles in subject areas which support classes at the university, including silent film, French and Spanish cinema, and films from Ireland, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand. But the entire collection will be readily available to both the Dal community and the broader public. Click here for full details.

Summer Shine

In early September, the Dal Libraries held our annual welcome reception for the Dal School of Information Management (SIM) students. This event now includes the Summer Shine presentations – this year featuring the summer projects by our six SIM interns and one Young Canada Works student.

• Keri McCaffrey: Developing Training Modules for Kellogg Navigators
• Alice Albarda: Digitization at the Dalhousie Archives
• Lauren Bull: Sign(s) of the Times
• Jacob Ericson: Citation Style Libguide & Cockerell Fine Bindings
• Deborah Hemming: Comments, Compliments, & Complaints: Creating a Feedback Database for the Killam Library
• Nick Manuel: Collection Management of Physical & Digital Resources at the Kellogg Library
• Domenic Rosati: Collection Assessment of Physical Carriers of Born-Digital Archival Material

PechaKucha Event: In late August we held the first annual Dal Libraries Conference Season Pecha Kucha event, featuring presentations by 12 Dal librarians and staff. Everyone who attended a conference that spring or summer was encouraged to do a PechaKucha-style presentation about it—20 slides for 20 seconds each on the theme of “What can the Dal Libraries use from what you learned [at the conference]?”

Dalhousie-wide Records Management Project: In June, funding was approved to hire a Records Management Consultant to help Dalhousie finalize a Records Management Policy and best practices, and implement a program under the auspices of the Libraries, based in the Archives. It has been a busy time informing various constituencies and consulting regarding specific RM needs in each unit.

Oriel MacLennan: an enduring study of Marie-Claire Blais: Dalhousie Librarian Oriel MacLennan has just published a second bibliography about Québec writer Marie-Claire Blais. Oriel has been researching Marie-Claire Blais for almost thirty years. In addition to the two bibliographies, she has also written and collaborated on two articles and appeared in a documentary about Blais. An important figure in the Canadian literary scene, Blais is known for producing works of great scholarly interest. She has written more than thirty novels that have been translated into English, German, Russian, and Chinese.[1] Blais has also won many awards for her work, including four Governor General’s Literary Awards, in 1968, 1979, 1996, and 2008. Click here for more details.

Reading with J.A. Wainwright: One of our most respected Dalhousie Canadian literature teachers and writers (now retired from teaching), Dr. J. A. Wainwright, gave a reading on Tuesday, October 4 in the program room on the fifth floor of the Killam Library. Dr. Wainwright is the author of five books of poetry, five novels, and two biographies. His most recent work of fiction is The Last Artist (2016). He is McCulloch Emeritus Professor in English at Dalhousie University. Click here for full details.

Dal Libraries Presents a Digital Preservation Management Workshop: The Dalhousie Libraries organized a five-day Digital Preservation Management (DPM) Workshop this September. The workshop was led by internationally recognized digital preservation experts Nancy McGovern (Director of Digital Preservation at MIT Libraries) and Kari Smith (Senior Digital Archivist at MIT Institute Archives), along with guest instructors and presenters both in-person and virtually. There was also a keynote presentation by Evelyn McLellan, President of Artefactual Systems. Click here for full details.