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News from the Department of Information Science (formerly SIM)

Category: Research

Call for student participation: Experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse graduate students

EXPERIENCES OF CULTURALLY AND LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE GRADUATE STUDENTS ENROLLED IN ALA-ACCREDITED PROGRAMS OF LIBRARY & INFORMATION PROFESSIONS
 
Dear students and alumni,
 
We are exploring the experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse students who chose an ALA-accredited program for their graduate education, and/or the library- and information-related fields as their future career. We would like to invite you to take part in the survey designed to get insights into your decision-making process, as well as your perception of the field of study and practice.
 
We would be grateful if you considered taking about 30 min of your time to respond to the survey questions. Most questions are multiple-choice and can be answered quickly. However, we also value your opinion and experiences, and therefore some questions give you a chance to tell us your stories. Please check the participation criteria below to see if this survey is for you.
 
We invite you to participate if you belong to either of the two groups:
 
Group 1: immigrants to Canada and the US, who immigrated as young adults (16 years or older) or as adults; who speak a language other than English as their mother tongue; and whose secondary (and possibly postsecondary) education was partially or fully acquired outside of North America
 
Group 2: members of visible minorities or aboriginal populations who were born in Canada or the US or immigrated to Canada or the US at the age of 15 or younger.
 
Note for Francophone students: Since French is an official language of Canada, if you are a native-born French Canadian, please do not complete this survey.
 
Your participation in this study is entirely voluntary and anonymous. You don’t have to answer any questions you don’t wish to answer. You don’t have to say anything that makes you uncomfortable or anxious. You are free to stop answering at any time for any reason and withdraw from the study. The results will be reported in aggregate, and no individual school or program will be identified in the data report. All identifying information will be eliminated from the final report.
 
This survey is conducted by Dr. Nadia Caidi (nadia.caidi@utoronto.ca) of the Faculty of Information, U of Toronto, Canada, and Dr. Keren Dali, Faculty of Information & Media Studies, Western U, Canada (kdali@uwo.ca). Please write us if you have any questions about this study or require more information.
 
You can also contact the Office of Research Ethics at ethics.review@utoronto.ca or 416-946-3273, if you have questions about your rights as a participant.
 
If you would like to participate in the survey, please click here https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NCKDLIS1.
 
THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP.

 

Academic Support Series

All MLIS students, be sure to check out the new Academic Support Series designed specifically for you by Lindsay McNiff, from Dalhousie Libraries.  Do not miss out on this exciting opportunity:

 

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Innovations in SIM: SIM Subject Librarian office hours & Academic Support Series workshops

This year, with the help and support of the faculty and staff in SIM, I am truly excited to offer these two new initiatives. I hope students will take advantage of these opportunities, tell me what they think, offer suggestions based on their own needs and experiences as students in this program, and help facilitate an environment where we learn from each other.

Subject Librarian office hours in SIM

Embedded – what does it mean? (Please ignore any burial connotations). In short, embedded librarianship moves the librarian out of the library (either physically or virtually) and places them closer to where their people work and learn. In my role as the SIM liaison librarian, I will be “embedding” in SIM for 90 minutes per week. Every Tuesday from 1-2:30 you can find me in the School of Information Management, where I will be holding office hours in 4018 (right behind the admin area). Please use this time to drop in by yourself or in a group and ask me anything about research, the library, librarianship, etc. If I’m not in my SIM office during this time slot, I am teaching one of the Academic Support Series workshops.

Academic Support Series workshops

These workshops are designed to augment your coursework, introduce you to the resources important to your field, give you some extra information and experience (maybe even something you can add to your resume), and refresh some of your skills. All of these sessions will be held in Rowe 4001 (the computer lab right by the elevators), and please try to register with carol.richardson@dal.ca before attending.

Check out my Subject Librarian page for a full list of office hours and workshops.

Two things to note:

  1. The “External funding” workshop is being offered twice, each time immediately following my sessions on APA citation: Tuesday, Sept. 9th at 1:15pm OR Friday, September 12 at 1:15pm. The pamphlet distributed during Orientation lists the second session as occurring on the 11th – this is an error! My apologies.
  2. I was so glad to be able to talk a little bit about these two brand new initiatives as part of SIM orientation today, and one of the second year students asked a very important question: are these initiatives open to returning students? Absolutely! Second-year students are more than welcome to register and attend the workshops, and I definitely hope to see a mix of first- and second-year students in my office on Tuesdays at SIM. All SIM students are welcome!

Questions? Email me at lindsay.mcniff@dal.ca

Reading course topic: Models of health library service delivery

An opportunity to further develop systematic information search skills, research skills including data gathering using interviewing, data analysis and reporting skills.

Health librarianship is not an academic discipline; those who teach do not always practice or lead the field.   Instructors in health librarianship are not well supported with a body of empirical research to inform health librarianship course content.  Although there are excellent examples of health library service delivery, notably the academic-health service partnership model, health library service delivery models are not well defined, there are few recognized best practices, and little work has been done to determine whether general library service models (e.g. Kwanya et al, 2012) represent health library services well.

This reading course will explore health library service delivery to identify and define service models.

The student will prepare a syllabus, complete a Dalhousie Faculty of Management Ethics Review Application for Individual Student Projects, and then take a stepwise planned approach to:

  1. Self-directed reading, documented by maintaining an annotated list of completed readings (Deliverable 1)
  2. A systematic search of the formal research literature related to library service delivery models generally and health library service models specifically.  The search will follow methods as described in Booth et al. (2012). Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review.  Deliverable 2 will include:
  • the framed search question
  • the mapped concept(s) associated with the search questions
  • a scoping search report to include charts describing publication timeline and size of the literature by subject domain
  • searches of three commercial databases and grey literature resources
  • documentation of search methods
  • search results organized within a Refworks Refshare folder
  1. Working with the course instructor, the student will Identify up to five potential health library service delivery models, then design a jurisdictional review in the form of up to five structured interviews with service leaders to gather additional information to:
  • Identify and define elements of each model
  • Identify and outline strengths and weaknesses.
  1. The student will summarize results in the form of an academic poster.

This reading course will allow a student to apply and further develop skills gained in other courses, including INFO5515 Organization of Information and INFO 5530 Information Sources and Retrieval.  These include:

  • Client engagement
  • Research methods
  • Reference management software
  • Health databases, library and information science databases, grey literature.

Please refer to MLIS Reading Courses: Policy and Procedures (INFO 6700/6710)http://sim.management.dal.ca/Courses/MLIS%20Courses%20Offered/Reading_Courses.php, then contact Dr. Jacqueline MacDonald: jacqueline.macdonald@dal.ca for more information.

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