OLA's Super Conference 2007

A Million Reasons to Smile
Friends of the Ajax Public Library
Cindy Kimber

Ajax Friends of the Library undertook a formidable challenge in 1998 when embarking on a grassroots campaign to raise $1 Million for the new main branch library. Seven years later their commitment to the town is fully paid. Get an understanding of how two aspects of their work — advocacy and fundraising came together to ensure success!
One Book One City: Tackling Poverty Through the Arts
Hamilton Public Library and ArtsHamilton

For the first time, a One Book, One City project will use the common language of the arts to raise awareness of poverty in the community. The award-winning novel Looking for X by Canadian author Deborah Ellis is the focus of a unique 'One Book One City: Tackling Poverty through the Arts' program. Hamilton is a diverse community and a top destination for new Canadians. Given our rich cultural makeup, art is the common language we all share. The project, led in partnership by the Hamilton Public Library and Arts Hamilton, and generously funded by the Hamilton Community Foundation, has a powerful outreach and engagement component. The display we will feature cover art of Looking for X; biographical information about author Deborah Ellis; and information about the One Book One City project.
Seniors Guided Autobiography
Huntsville Public Library Board
Nigel Tappin

Writing guided autobiographical essays can assist a senior to explore what she or he has accomplished. Guided autobiography combines individual and group experiences with autobiography, including (1) private reflection and the writing of two-page life stories on selected themes and (2) reading these life stories aloud to the group and discussing one's own and other members' experiences. Sharing life stories with other participants refreshes one's memories of the past and allows individuals to re-experience parts of their own lives through seeing parallels with their own experiences in the stories of others. As many seniors who participate want to continue writing more biographical essays, Huntsville Public Library is starting an "Elders' Memoir Club" program as a follow on for these clients.
Teen Get Carded Project
Oshawa Public Libraries
Margaret Wallace, Ellen Stroud and Joseph Sansalone

Over this past summer (2006), a pilot teen membership project was conceived and put in motion. The project was called "Get Carded". Essentially the aim of this project was to get Library cards into the hands of every student and teacher at the participating High School in Oshawa. This project achieved its targeted success percentages and will be fully implemented to all interested High Schools in Oshawa.
Step-by-Step Blogging: creating an innovative communications tool for your library
Waterloo Public Library
Christine Brown and Gloria Van Eek-Meijers

Waterloo Public Library has developed an innovative Web-based approach to information sharing and interacting with customers. Through blogs (Weblogs), the Library shares news and events with customers, introduces and educates them to new technologies and gives them another way of communicating directly with us. The newest blog, WPLWESTBRANCH is used to keep the community updated on developments and events relating to the planning and construction of a new branch. This poster session will demonstrate how other libraries can easily replicate this model using free Web-based blogging software. Waterloo Public library hopes that the poster session will demystify blogging technology and encourage other libraries to make use of this innovative, successful and cost effective communications tool.
Friends of the Library - An Invaluable Resource
Friends of Canadian Libraries
Nicholas Spillios and Dorothy Macnaughton

Join Friends of Canadian Libraries (FOCAL) to celebrate our tenth anniversary year. Our contributions to the library community are in the fields of volunteerism, advocacy, fundraising and community partnerships. FOCAL functions as a national support and resource network to assist in the formation and promotion of Friends of Libraries groups across Canada. Review accomplishments of our award-winning Friends, discover the resources available via our Web site, pick up a copy of our current newsletter FOCAL Point, and understand the added value a Friends group can contribute to your library.
eLearning Initiative for Ontario Public Libraries
OPLN FOPL Ptbo Public
TEKdesk staff

An innovative project to bring technology learning to library staff and volunteers supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation in partnership with the Federation of Ontario Public Libraries, Ontario Public Library Network. TEKdesk is delivering on-line seminars for staff and volunteers using Web conferencing technology, peer mentoring and multimedia presentations. The project is collaborating with WebJunction in selecting tools, training staff and building learning sessions.

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Thursday, February 1, 2007 1:00 pm - 1:45 pm

Time capsule - 20 years of service to hospital libraries in Ontario
Ontario Health Libraries Association
Jami van Haaften and Gurvinder Batra

Find out more about the history of Ontario's health library association. OHLA is an association committed to the support of health library specialists who deliver quality information services to the health care communities of Ontario. Working in the areas of leadership, advocacy, education and communications we represent health libraries in over 70 communities across Ontario. What is the vision that founded the association? How has the mandate and objectives evolved over the past twenty years? Who were the leaders involved during the formative years? What are the professional concerns that have been studied over the years? Find out more about this dedicated group, as they enter a third decade of service and professional growth.
Intermediary Roles for Librarians in Patient Education
Princess Margaret Hospital
Susan MacDonald and Todie Winter

The delivery of clinically reliable information in the form of patient education has become a key component in the delivery of health care, meeting patient expectations as much as the desire of clinicians to reinforce adherence to care plans. Having access to quality information is particularly critical as the popularity of searching for online health-related information soars. This interest has spurred healthcare providers to find ways to make on-line information available as part of overall disease management strategies. It is in this information or health informatics context that the Patient Education Plan (PEPTalk) Project worked to: 1) develop tailored, culturally relevant educational resources for people with chronic illness, 2) design new clinical and information practices to deliver patient education, and 3) design a new information system to store, share and maintain the Web-based resources. From a librarianship perspective, the PEPTalk project provided a forum to examine the ways in which librarians, as members of the research team, were involved in the information and systems design process.
Integrating Information Literacy into Blackboard
University of Toronto, Dentistry Library
Helen Yueping He

The goal of this project is to provide undergraduate students with research assistance targeted directly to their course needs, provide a self-paced, "anytime-anywhere" introduction to core library resources, services and introduce some basic research skills.

Since the dentistry undergraduate students are unlike those in arts and humanity — they don't have many essay assignments, so they are not keen on library information. We developed a brief resource guide related to their subject and a video demo of how to search Ovid Medline for their research topic.
Special Collections at Ryerson University Library
Ryerson University Library
Megan Harris & Roma Kail

Ryerson University offers programs and courses in a wide range of subjects. The University's library holdings are a clear representation of this diverse academic community. Adding Special Collections to the Library's holdings demonstrates the university's commitment to outstanding and relevant, educational opportunities. Four main collections comprise this new learning environment of historical artifacts, photographic books, photographic negatives, audiovisual material, and textual files. This poster session will address the difficulties of acquiring such collections and making them accessible to a large community. It will also illustrate the role of Special Collections within the context and scope of Ryerson University. The session will reveal how Ryerson University Library offers access to the collections while ensuring long time use of the material, through proper housing and preservation.
Digital Image Presentations in the UTSC Classroom
University of Toronto Scarborough Library
Heather Glerum

Using University of Toronto Scarborough as the locus for experimentation, this poster will look at the resources for working with digital images at UTSC and will concentrate on instructors of art and art history. The following questions will be considered: What are the main sources of digital images? To whom do these sources belong? How are they funded? How were they established? It will include a description of the resources and discuss special features of particular interest to faculty and how the resources can be added to, or otherwise tailored to suit the needs of individual faculty members or specific disciplines? Observations and conclusions will be presented.
Volunteer Boot Camp: constructing and delivering a training program for hospital library-based volunteers.
Princess Margaret Hospital, Patient and Family Library
Michelle Arbuckle and Todie Winter

Volunteers at the Patient and Family Library, Princess Margaret Hospital bring with them many different life experiences from a wide variety of backgrounds. Often these individuals struggle with the roles expected of them within the Patient Education Program. In order to address the spectrum of skills required in this role the Patient Education Program has developed a comprehensive training program to ensure that volunteers are prepared for the high demands of the library environment and that staff are comfortable with their knowledge base.

This poster demonstrates the strategies and resources that are used to improve the quality of library interactions and information searches conducted by volunteers. It will also highlight the processes taken to develop a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to training volunteers in the following areas: library processes & resources, technology skills and online evaluation strategies, and psychosocial skills.
Redesigning your library intranet: Identifying unique needs for effective regeneration
University of Toronto, Faculty of Information Studies
Jessica Posgate & Alex MacCutcheon

Intranets are increasingly popular for library organizations, but these systems are not always built to expand with the libraries that created them. Designers need to address common issues like user needs, administration, content currency and display consistency, encouraging user buy-in, and an increasing need for dynamic Web work space for collaboration. This session will present examples of overwhelming, underused and dynamic intranet home pages, diagrams mapping user groups according to their workflow divisions, and a prototype home page reflecting short term recommendations. The challenge for any systems librarian or Web manager is to redesign their library's intranet to meet specific staff needs and unique organizational workflows. First generation intranet problems are common, and libraries will need to anticipate these issues as they work to balance the immediate and future demands of library staff

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Friday, February 2, 2007 12:00 pm - 12:45 pm

The Books and Writers Community: Come Join!
Marsha Skrypuch, Martha Martin, Marina Cohen, and Hélène Boudreau

Want to help those aspiring writers who frequent your library? The Books and Writers on-line community can help. This free on-line writing forum has been around since the early 1980s -- it actually predates the Internet! Within the forum is a private critique group for aspiring and published children's writers. Participants come from all over the English speaking world and swap feedback with one another on their stories, query letters and more. Many participants have received book contracts after honing their stories and submission process in the critique group. Find out how to participate in this free group and how to get your patrons hooked in. Sample on-line critiques will be on display, as well as instructions on how to access the forum.
The Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in the Information-Search Process of Adolescents
McGill University, Graduate School of Library and Information Science
Leanne Bowler

This poster reports on a longitudinal study that investigated the metacognitive knowledge of adolescents, ages 16 to 19, as they searched for, selected and used information for a school project. Preliminary results point to a lack of awareness of the cognitive demands of the information-seeking task, coupled with an array of "emergency" cognitive strategies for dealing with the resulting confusion and stress. The discord between the desire to explore a topic in greater depth versus the need to complete an assignment, and the role of metacognitive knowledge in regulating this conflict, suggests an interesting relationship between cognitive confusion, inquisitiveness and metacognitive knowledge. As well, some of the interview questions were interpreted by participants at two levels; either at a surface level, focusing on procedural matters, or at a deeper level, with a focus on mental processes and understanding — evidence perhaps of metacognitive knowledge or the lack thereof.
The Contributors' Gateway: Making Digital Educational Resources Available for Ontario Teachers and Students
University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)
Julie Hannaford

e-Learning Ontario (Ministry of Education) has undertaken a comprehensive e-learning strategy so that students' educational experiences can be adapted to meet their individual strengths and interests. Part of this strategy includes the development of a learning object repository called the Ontario Educational Resource Bank (OERB). It houses digital resources that both teachers and students can use to support their educational activities. Examples of content include videos, animations, activities and lesson plans. Resources are linked directly to the Ontario curriculum expectations, which is an enormous asset for teachers. There are now more than 3600 resources in the OERB and the bank continues to grow.

Staff of the Academic Computing Group, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto have built a Web-based application called the Contributors' Gateway, which allows teachers to share their resources with the OERB and subsequently with other Ontario teachers and students. This poster presentation will demonstrate sample digital resources and the Contributors' Gateway interface.
The Just Read Project
Greater Essex County District School Board
Martha Martin, Elizabeth Golden

How can that Student Success Initiative money be used to connect teacher-librarians with literacy in the classroom? What do we need to promote our pricelessness to our classroom colleagues? The "Just Read Project" is an innovative and exciting way to connect subject areas with fabulous fiction and non-fiction, showcase the new literacies, promote literature circles in old and new ways, and expand the learning community beyond the classroom door. Come away with resources you can use in your own school and great ideas for proving your value as a teacher-librarian. This is a feel-good message about how teacher-librarians have the power to turn "reluctant readers" into "literacy leaders." You, too, can be a Book Babe!
Library Research Basics: The evolution of an on-line information literacy tutorial
University of Ottawa, Morisset Library
Ann Hemingway, Steve Rokeby, Jennifer Dekker

Faced with increasing demands for Information Literacy (IL) instruction across the three major libraries at the University of Ottawa, librarians acutely realized the need for an alternative and a support to their lecture-style instruction. An on-line IL tutorial was envisioned ... but with no in-house programming expertise, no budget, and no hard evidence that this approach would work, it took creativity and determination to get this project off the ground. This poster session details the planning, partnership development and expertise needed to develop a fully interactive and bilingual on-line tutorial, including lessons learned and the realities of ongoing maintenance inherent in any on-line educational aid.
Locating Toronto's public libraries in a multicultural society: Matching people and services
University of Toronto, Faculty of Information Studies
Nadia Caidi, Danielle Allard, Chiu Luk

Canada's largest cities have a long tradition of assisting immigrants find their place in Canadian society at all levels of local and civic life. Using Geographical Information System (GIS) software, this study examines "where" public libraries fit within the lived experience of two immigrant communities in Toronto: Chinese and Indians. By mapping key indicators such as the residential areas of Chinese and Indian immigrant communities, the poverty levels for the neighborhoods selected, and examining multicultural service provision at six public library systems located in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area, we assess the ways in which libraries have accounted (or not) for changing patterns of migration and settlement over time. Our findings shed light on the opportunities and challenges facing libraries in providing adequate resources and services to immigrants. We address the need for creative solutions including restructuring services and outreach to position the library as a core institution in new Canadians' lives.

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