Leddy Library

In 2009, President Barack Obama declared October of that year to be National Information Literacy Awareness Month and issued a proclamation stating that "an informed and educated citizenry is essential to the functioning of our modern democratic society." The Obama proclamation's emphasis on information literacy's role in education and democracy makes it akin to the 2005 Alexandria Proclamation on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning. In both of these documents, information literacy is located at the core of lifelong learning. It empowers people in all walks of life to seek, evaluate, use, and create information effectively to achieve their personal, social, occupational, and educational goals. These two documents are powerful and inspiring to many academic librarians because they are reminders of the broader social context and democratic initiatives within their work. Inspiring as these documents are, they can also be intimidating and overwhelming: how can we help create an informed and educated citizenry or help our students meet technological, economic, and social challenges, to redress disadvantage and to advance the well-being of all? This article is not an attempt to provide answers to these questions but a call to move these questions to the fore of our policy and pedagogical discussions. By revisiting seminal documents like

In this article, the authors describe a grassroots model for research support and explore the success and evolving directions of this model based on three iterative needs assessments administered by the Librarian and Archivist Research Support Network (LARSN) Steering Committee at The University of Western Ontario. Needs assessments were identified as a critical tool to ensure that LARSN programming is relevant to librarians' and archivists' changing research needs. In the first four years of LARSN, three needs assessments were administered: in fall 2007, fall 2009, and spring 2011. The iterative needs assessments aimed to capture how the environment and Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, vol. 8, no. 2 (2013) 2 participation levels in LARSN initiatives, and the inability to be all things to all people at all times. Still, LARSN is well received overall and rated positively by its community members. This is, in large part, because it has stayed true to its original mission to be needs-driven and responsive.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how students accept and use e-textbooks in higher education by assessing their experiences with e-textbooks from Flat World Knowledge (FWK) and Nelson Education during a two year campus pilot. Design/methodology/approach – Students enrolled in one of 11 classes involved in the library’s e-textbook pilot were recruited to complete an online survey including questions related to the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of electronic textbooks, as well as their general habits with the textbook. This study uses the Technology Acceptance Model as a framework for analysis. Findings – Students experienced a drop in enthusiasm for e-textbooks from the beginning to the end of the pilot. While research suggests that students prefer for print over electronic in some contexts, students rarely acted on that preference by seeking out available alternative print options. Student experience with the open/affordab...

There is a growing need for data management services for researchers. The Canadian International Polar Year program provided leadership in this area by requiring researchers to implement a data management plan; preserving and making data available helps research move forward and prevents research data from being under-utilized or lost because of poor management. Proper data management involves: preservation; accessibility; confidentiality; intellectual property rights; and, information technology issues. Increasingly, data are produced by collaborations that span borders, adding complexity to management issues. Given that librarians have experience in preserving and making information available, they are in a position to collaborate with researchers in providing data stewardship locally, nationally, and internationally. The Association of Research Libraries and the Digital Library Federation, both headquartered in Washington, D.C., cosponsored the 2011–2012 “e-Science Institute” which helped U.S. and Canadian academic libraries develop strategic agendas with researchers to frame their support for data management. The University of Waterloo team of librarians and scientists has created a strategic agenda as an outcome of the Institute that will allow for collaboration with scientists and administrators in addressing data management issues and providing support to researchers. The lessons for data management developed as a result of consultations throughout the University of Waterloo and through workshops involving the e-Science Institute are reviewed as guidance for scientists who collect data and who wish to ensure that their efforts are preserved for future generations.

Participants will learn about data management planning initiatives in North American research libraries and the initiatives around this at the University of Waterloo and CARL (Canadian Academic Research Libraries) members.

The uWaterloo Library and its TUG partners, Laurier and Guelph, provide a discovery tool for one-stop access to the significant electronic scholarly resources the Library licenses. In this session find out about the state of search, the capabilities of loading and normalizing heterogeneous XML-encoded metadata, and the aggregated meta-index and recommendation service that the Library is piloting. The presenters will spend some time on the underlying open source components being used as well.

One of the largest needs these days in libraries is closer strategic and operational alignment of the work that information technology units provide with the business goals of the libraries that they are partnered or situated within. Join us for an engaging panel discussion of how three different organizations strive to meet this expectation. The topic is one that is vital to today's libraries, and I will solicit leaders from different models of organizations (IT within library/IT external to library, public/private, etc.) to speak on this topic in an engaging one-hour interactive session.

There is a growing need for data management services for researchers. The Canadian International Polar Year program provided leadership in this area by requiring researchers to implement a data management plan; preserving and making data available helps research move forward and prevents research data from being under-utilized or lost because of poor management. Proper data management involves: preservation; accessibility; confidentiality; intellectual property rights; and, information technology issues. Increasingly, data are produced by collaborations that span borders, adding complexity to management issues. Given that librarians have experience in preserving and making information available, they are in a position to collaborate with researchers in providing data stewardship locally, nationally, and internationally. The Association of Research Libraries and the Digital Library Federation, both headquartered in Washington, D.C., cosponsored the 2011–2012 “e-Science Institute” which helped U.S. and Canadian academic libraries develop strategic agendas with researchers to frame their support for data management. The University of Waterloo team of librarians and scientists has created a strategic agenda as an outcome of the Institute that will allow for collaboration with scientists and administrators in addressing data management issues and providing support to researchers. The lessons for data management developed as a result of consultations throughout the University of Waterloo and through workshops involving the e-Science Institute are reviewed as guidance for scientists who collect data and who wish to ensure that their efforts are preserved for future generations.

Participants will learn about data management planning initiatives in North American research libraries and the initiatives around this at the University of Waterloo and CARL (Canadian Academic Research Libraries) members.

Many of us have participated in strategic planning, but fewer have experienced in back to back in two different institutional settings, with an opportunity to compare and contrast these. This presentation will detail experience leading two strategic planning processes in a private US institution and a public Canadian institution, in 2010-2011 and 2012-2013, respectively. Approaches to strategic planning is governed by institutional context, experience, norms and leadership. There will be some time for audience participation as well, sharing your experiences with library strategic planning, to provide further insight on things to consider for your next strategic planning exercise!

Use of online courseware in supporting distributed and distance learning in higher education is maturing in terms of both technology and organizational readiness. However, faculty and institutions are concerned with receiving equal credit for creating and delivering online courses. For both, peer review is important, while faculty have additional concern over workload and promotion and tenure considerations. Standards, interoperability, and collaboration will increase the legitimacy of their efforts. This session will present the work of three initiatives that are developing standards for courseware repositories, interoperability between courseware products, and collaborative efforts to produce and share courseware for member institutions and others.

Virtual reference services, particularly in academic libraries, are coming to be regarded as essential. LSSI and LivePerson are among the well-established commercial vendors of virtual reference systems. However, interesting open source efforts offer libraries the power to customize their virtual reference services to best meet their institution's needs better than many commercial packages can. This session provides an overview of three open-source packages, discusses how they are being used, and examines their role in providing academic reference services.

Although generalized architectures for digital libraries are still being defined, we now have a good understanding of the components that support the services of a digital library. Many of these components are or are based on open source software - and for good reason. This session details the different areas of a digital library architecture, and demonstrates how open source software is an important component in the digital library. Several open source or community source projects with be detailed in depth, and the panelists will discuss successes and challenges in utilizing open source software in library settings.

The last year has seen tremendous activity in the discussion and development of the "next gen" library catalog. Starting with the implementation of Endeca's faceted browsing interface at NCSU, several exciting projects have moved forward in both the open source and commercial software spaces. This session will highlight four different approaches in this area.

Protecting user privacy and confidentiality is fundamental to the ethics and practice of librarianship, and such protection constitutes one of eleven values in the American Library Association's "Core Values of Librarianship" (2004). This paper addresses the concerns of protecting privacy in the library as they relate to library users who are defining, exploring, and negotiating their sexual identities with the help of the library's information, programming, and physical facilities. In so doing, we enlist the aid of Garret Keizer, who, in Privacy (2012), articulates a fresh theory of the concept in light of American social life in the twenty-first century. Using Keizer's theory, we examine these concerns within the context of the rise of big data systems and social media on the one hand, and linked data and new cataloging standards on the other. In so doing, we suggest that linked data technologies, with their ability to lead searchers through selfdirected, open inquiry, are superior to big data technologies in the navigation of the paradox between openness and secrecy. In this way they offer a greater potential to support the needs of queer library users: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or questioning (LGBTQ).

During the First World War, Canadians (primarily but not exclusively women) voluntarily gave their time and labour to the Canadian Red Cross Society in order to aid sick and wounded soldiers overseas. Red Cross activities such as fundraising, rolling bandages, knitting socks, writing letters for soldiers in hospital, tracing the missing and wounded, and sending parcels to Prisoners of War were described by those within the organization as acts of caring. In time, the Canadian Red Cross and its volunteers were also associated more specifically with mothering. The carework Canadians undertook through the Canadian Red Cross Society involved time-consuming labour, and portions of it had enormous economic value, but these aspects of Red Cross work were consistently downplayed at the time in favour of praise for the love, tenderness, and caring this work was said to express for sick and wounded Canadian citizen-soldiers. In this way the Canadian Red Cross Society and its volunteers were said to be serving as surrogate mothers for Canadian “boys” overseas. Constructing the carework of the Red Cross as an act of mothering gave the organization symbolic and moral power, drawing broad public support and large financial contributions for its work. As maternal feminists had done repeatedly since the late nineteenth century, some Canadian women used this mothering discourse associated with the Red Cross to translate their voluntary work into greater roles for themselves within the public sphere.

This study is an institutional history of one of Canada's oldest and most prestigious voluntary organizations, and its role in Canadian society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Between 1885 and 1939 the Canadian Red Cross Society underwent a series of transformations:  establishment as a branch of the British Red Cross Society, temporary growth during the South African War, near-death after 1902, reorganization and incorporation in 1909, national expansion and overseas accomplishment during the Great War, and expansion into public health work after 1918.  While the organization changed as an institution during this period, so did its relationship with Canadians and its role in Canadian society.
    Through a qualitative analysis of Canadian Red Cross Society records, supplemented by memoirs, journals, personal papers, contemporary newspapers, and government records, it becomes clear that the Canadian Red Cross Society did not become Canada's leading humanitarian aid organization and one of its most enduring charities purely by chance.  The Society's survival and successful adaptation prior to the Second World War rested variously on its ability to tap into contemporary currents of militarism, patriotism, and maternalism; to mobilize first military and medical men, then middle- and upper-class white women, and eventually as wide a swath of the Canadian population as possible; to construct and exploit openings for itself in military medicine, women's wartime service, and Canadian health and welfare provision; and to both nationalize and regionalize, creating a nation-building mission for itself in the broadly defined health realm and entrusting the future of the national organization to the initiative and activity of local and provincial branches.  The Society's adaptability and elastic interpretations of its mandate eventually came to annoy and infuriate individuals in government and other voluntary and charitable organizations, but they proved crucial to the Society's longevity.

This article explores the untold history of English-Canadian children's First World War work for the Canadian Red Cross Society.  First it examines young people's material and symbolic contributions, then follows the legacies of children's war work through to the Second World War.  It also highlights the connection between youthful war work and the interwar Junior Red Cross (focused on health, service, and citizenship).  English-Canadian youth did not cause the conflict, but through their involvement with the Canadian Red Cross Society successive generations of them bore the war's tangible and intangible burdens.