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News from the Department of Information Science (formerly SIM)

Archives for Lara Killian

Holly Jolly 2012 Social – You’re invited!

The Halifax Library Association’s holiday social is back!  Join your friends and colleagues for an evening of great food, door prizes, fun, and holiday cheer at our annual holiday event!  Cash bar, with drink tickets available at the door.

*WHEN:* Wednesday, December 5th / 6pm – 9pm
*WHERE*: Argyle Fine Art, 1559 Barrington Street
*TICKETS*: Available at the door / $10 ($8 students)

*RSVP:* Please RSVP by December 3rd to halifaxlibraryassociation@gmail.com OR on our Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/events/451934064842086/

The HLA would like to thank the Nova Scotia Provincial Library, Maritime Health Libraries Association (MHLA), NSALT, and SIM’s SLA chapter for their sponsorship of this event.  Stay tuned for more details about our great supporters and fabulous door prizes from APLA, OCLC, Woozles, and  Uncommon Grounds.

Check out our blog: http://halifaxla.wordpress.com/

SIM Alum Talks Tech at Upcoming Public Library Presentation

Come be a friendly face in the crowd – and maybe learn something about upping the ante on your holiday wishlist!

On Tuesday November 20 at 7 pm at the Woodlawn branch of Halifax Public Libraries I’ll be talking about gift giving ideas for this holiday season.  Everyone’s welcome for this free presentation, where I’ll have a bunch of tech toys and accessories on hand to take a look at. You can find complete info about November-December 2012 programming at HPL in their PDF guide or on the HPL website.

Here’s the program description – hope to see you there!

Gadget Buying for Christmas

Learn about the latest electronic gadgets for this holiday season, such as tablets, mp3 players, mobile phones, eReaders, and accessories. Presenter Lara Killian co-hosts and produces commandN.tv, a video series covering technology and social media. commandN has been featured in Wired magazine, PC Magazine, and The Adventures of Superman!

Invitation to participate in the APLA 2012 Poster Session

Did you put together a poster for IWB 2012 or another event’s poster session already this year? Miss your chance to showcase your work at IWB perhaps? You’re invited to submit your work for the Atlantic Provinces Library Association 2012 annual conference! Grow your audience and make the most of your hard work at SIM!

Showcase your research or recent initiative at the APLA 2012 Poster Session during the annual APLA conference in beautiful Wolfville, NS at Acadia University. Student as well as information professional contributions are encouraged. This year’s theme is “Discovering Hidden Treasures“.

The 2012 Poster Session is being organized by the Dalhousie University School of Information Management Associated Alumni (SIMAA).

Poster creators will be invited to present their posters during the lunch breaks. Proposals will be accepted until 30 April 2012. Please submit a description of the project (150 words or less) along with the name of the presenter and the presenter’s institution, contact information, and a title for the poster to Lara Killian. More details regarding venue and poster set up will be available before the submission deadline.

Please feel free to contact Lara or Tanja Harrison (Program Chair) with any questions. We look forward to hearing about your current projects!

Lara Killian – SIMAA Program Convenor 2011-2012

Tanja Harrison – APLA 2012 Program Chair

Health Webinar: 2010 Impact factor and the Cochrane Library

This webinar will provide background to the recent release of the Impact factor reports and will take place on September 29, 2011.

Gavin Stewart of Wiley Blackwell, and Associate Editor of The Cochrane Library, has organized the session. Wiley will provide an overview of the bibliometric data and answer any queries regarding the calculation and interpretation of the impact factor and associated metrics.

The Nova Scotia Cochrane Resource Centre (5790 University Ave, 2nd floor of the Centre for Clinical Research) will provide space in room 217 to view the webinar on Thursday, September 29th at 2 pm. Please email Robin Parker (Robin.Parker@cdha.nshealth.ca) to register your interest so we can plan to have enough space. You can also email Gavin Stewart (gstewart@wiley.com) to gain access elsewhere if you are unable to join us onsite.

Several recent SIM alumni who work with the Nova Scotia Cochrane Resource Centre will be in attendance. Following the webinar, Jessica Babineau, Lara Killian, and Robin Parker would be happy to speak about working in health research on evidence syntheses.

Getting the most out of your MLIS experience!

Greetings, MLIS colleagues! This guest blog post is the first in a planned series at SIM, where fellow information professionals in the Halifax community and beyond will be invited to post some of their information management musings and to engage in the discussion these posts will generate. I’ll be keeping an eye on your comments for at least the next week (promise!) so feel free to respond and start some discussion!

As a recent grad of the program, and someone who has spent a considerable amount of the last year job hunting, I’d like to offer a key thought as you begin your first or second year of the program. Here it is: Get involved. Just going to your classes and doing a practicum is not going to differentiate you from our peers, whether they graduate from Western or UBC or San Jose State.

It’s pretty simple. I was involved in SIMSA (the School of Information Management Students’ Association), DJIM (the Dalhousie Journal of Interdisciplinary Management), and the SLA (Special Libraries Association) student chapter while studying for my MLIS. When it came time to apply for jobs and then to do job interviews, it wasn’t my coursework that potential employers were interested in. The time management skills I honed while working the publication process at DJIM, or the public speaking experience I gained as part of the SIMSA executive came up much more often in interviews.

If running for an elected position or volunteering for a committee doesn’t interest you, there are so many other ways you can add to your CV and make yourself more attractive to future employers. In the winter of my first year I threw together a poster for the IWB (Information without Borders) conference, even though I’d never done anything like it before. That spring I organized a quick Web 2.0 workshop for MLIS peers so we could share with each other which applications (Twitter, RSS feeds) we regularly use and love. It took very little planning and was a fun way to learn from my classmates. I was asked about all of these little details from my CV during job interviews this spring and summer.

It’s the start of a fresh school year and a great time to think about what you can do in coming months to make yourself stand out. Don’t miss this opportunity to find ways, whether large or small, to make yourself unique among MLIS grads. Feel free to comment about ideas you have for getting involved, or to discuss how you’re already setting yourself apart – simply by reading this blog and keeping in touch with SIM’s network of active professionals.

Lara (MLIS 2010) is a Research Assistant at the College of Pharmacy at Dalhousie University. She writes book and film reviews for PopMatters.com, here. She’s also on Twitter, here.

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