Please join us for this exciting event. Free and open to the public – no RSVP required. Feel free to share! View the Facebook event here and full details here.
IM Public Lecture: Ann Shaftel (Treasure Caretaker Training)
The Information Management Public Lectures give attention to exciting advances in research and professional practice. The topics are diverse reflecting the importance and global extent of Information Management in today’s society. The lectures are open to all members of the Dalhousie campus and surrounding community. Click here for the full schedule.
Innovative Digital Documentation of Buddhist Monastery Treasures with Smartphones
Ann Shaftel
Treasure Caretaker Training
Lecture Details
Wednesday, January 18th, 2017
4:15-5:15pm *embedded in the class INFO 6150: History of the Book
Room 5001, Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building, 6100 University Avenue
Abstract: Himalayan Buddhist monks and nuns are learning how to document their own monastery treasures…on their smartphones! Digital documentation is a way to protect and preserve monastery treasures from earthquake, theft, fire, flood, political upheaval and other dire threats. Through images of Himalayan monasteries, this talk reveals how the monks and nuns are learning to document, what they are documenting, where, and…why. Documentation in traditional cultures can be met with resistance, and this illustrated lecture presents research into cultural adaptation of collections management procedures in times of threat.
Biography: Ann Shaftel is a Fellow of International Institute of Conservation, a Fellow of American Institute of Conservation, member of Canadian Association of Professional Conservators, and member of ICOM. She is Adjunct Scholar with the Faculty of Graduate Studies, Dalhousie University. Ann works internationally for cultural, governmental, and military sectors, archives, museums, universities, and monasteries. She works hands-on in conservation of paintings and textiles, as well as organizing and teaching educational workshops in conservation. The Treasure Caretaker Training Digital Monastery Project, launched by Ann in 2014, won the Digital Empowerment Foundation and ENorthEast awards for its innovative use of digital technology in cultural heritage preservation. Ann conducts archival and museum assessments internationally.
SIM Alumna/Lecturer Receives a 2016 Management Teaching Excellence Award
From the Faculty of Management Dean’s office:
Please join me in congratulating the winners of the 2016 Management Teaching Excellence Awards!
After a difficult selection process, the committee selected the winners as follows:
Ms. Jennifer Grek-Martin of SIM and Dr. Jenny Zhang of the RSB will be awarded prizes of $5,000 each. Dr. Hossam Ali-Hassan of the RSB will be awarded the grand prize of $10,000.
The MTEAs will be awarded at a presentation on Monday, January 23rd at 11:30 in room 3089. All are welcome to attend and celebrate the worthy recipients and the quality of teaching in the Faculty of Management. Please share this information with your students; they are welcome to join the celebration as well.
Congrats Jennifer!
Thirty essential tips for succeeding in graduate school
Brown University professor Matthew Pratt Guterl has compiled the following tips for graduate students. His top ten are listed below:
- Remember: there are no non-professional interactions.
- Fundamentals matter. Practice your talks until they flow. Do some editorial work. Volunteer. Wear clean clothes. Update your software. Eat. Sleep. Take showers. Laugh. Love. Don’t obsess over the university—explore your city or town. Make friends everywhere. Eat cupcakes.
- Figure out what you stand for politically. Be prepared to speak up.
- Value loyalty over cool or influence. Make friends with people who care about your ideas and your well-being. Bleed for your friends and allies.
- Do not work with anyone whose first desire is to burn things down. Eventually, they will.
- Try not to get lost in departmental/teaching politics.
- Always say “thank you.” And always be “nice.” Until, of course, it is time not to be nice. Insisting on politeness—at least at first—isn’t about suppressing dissent. It is about recognizing that no one wins in the long term when everyone starts every conversation by shouting. Anger only nets short-term gain and inhibits long-term goals.
- From the moment you arrive, start thinking about the book you are going to write. No matter how daunting it seems, mess around with titles, and tables of contents, and story-lines. Think about archives and methods. Get in the habit of talking about it. Don’t be worried if, at first, you don’t know what you are doing. Choose a book that you can research and write well within five to six years. Don’t choose a topic so obscure that only a handful of people care about it. Don’t choose a topic so broad that it can’t be finished. Search for something that appeals to you and that connects with bigger issues. So choose wisely and be excited.
- Learn how to say “no” politely and firmly. And do so often. But also learn how to say “yes.” Learn how to recognize when someone has gone the extra mile to extend an invitation to you, to introduce you to someone, and say “yes” as a sign of respect.
- Take teaching seriously. Watch great teachers in the classroom. Ask them questions. Ask them to explain. Audit an undergraduate class. Draft syllabi, but don’t be weird about it. Talk to your comrades about what you’ve seen work in the classroom. Treat the discussion of teaching with as much seriousness as you do the discussion of the latest, coolest essay or book you’ve all read.
Do you have any other tips you would like to share?
IM Public Lecture: Heather O’ Brien (University of British Columbia)
The Information Management Public Lectures give attention to exciting advances in research and professional practice. The topics are diverse reflecting the importance and global extent of Information Management in today’s society. The lectures are open to all members of the Dalhousie campus and surrounding community. Click here for the full schedule. We encourage you to attend in person, but if that is not possible you can access a recording on our website following the lecture. Live streaming is not currently available.
Learning in Digital Information Spaces: What is the Role of User Engagement?
Heather O’Brien
University of British Columbia
Lecture Details:
Thursday, January 12th, 2017
11:45am-12:45pm
Room 3089, Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building, 6100 University Avenue
Abstract: User engagement, a quality of user experience, is characterized by the depth of an actor’s cognitive, temporal and/or emotional investment in an interaction with a digital system. Recent emphasis on user engagement suggests that the need to engage people with and through technology has never been more paramount: failure to do so may result in lost revenue for e-commerce and search engine companies, and access to/engagement with technology may impact social relationships, civic engagement, health, learning, and so forth. Yet there is a lack of empirical evidence linking user engagement with such personal and societal outcomes in information interaction studies. Of particular interest in this research is the outcome of learning: information consumers continuously clarify information needs and goals; interpret, evaluate and analyze information; and incorporate new insights into their existing knowledge base. This talk will report on two studies in online news and reading environments that have examined the relationship between user engagement and learning. These studies demonstrated the challenges with assessing learning in dynamic digital information spaces, the role that content and system characteristics play in fostering engagement and learning, and the need to critically probe the relationship between UE and learning in information interaction.
Biography: Heather O’Brien is an Associate Professor at the iSchool, University of British Columbia, where she teaches and researches in the area of human information interaction. Dr. O’Brien is best known for her work in the area of user engagement with technology, where she has contributed numerous publications, including two recent books, Why Engagement Matters: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives and Innovations on User Engagement with Digital Media (edited with Paul Cairns, 2016) and Measuring User Engagement (authored with Mounia Lalmas and Elad Yom-Tov, 2014), as well as the User Engagement Scale (UES), an experiential questionnaire that is used internationally to understand digitally mediated user experience. Her current research, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada and UBC’s Hampton Fund, is exploring the intersection of user characteristics (interest, cognitive load, affect, topical and technological expertise), tasks, and learning within exploratory search environments.