Reciprocal library & archives tour : Regina Public Library (Prairie History Room)

I was surprised to find out a few weeks ago that some of the libraries/archives in Regina were organizing tours so that library staff could visit each others facilities and learn more about what collections we have. I thought it was a wonderful idea and signed myself up as soon as I could. Something that definitely needs to be worked on more is communication between different organizations so that we can not only have better service, get to know each other a litter better and in most cases try to avoid duplication of materials. 

The first tour I went on was at the Regina Public Library, specifically the Prairie History Room.

May P. Chan, the Prairie History Librarian, was our tour guide and brought us through a quick tour of the central library before going on to the Prairie History Room. We quickly browsed through the reference, business, law and government documents sections, and learned that although they might not have an extensive collection, it is general enough that patrons can go and start their research at the public library. When members of the public come into our library looking to do research they often mention they had been to the public library first and had been advised to come look at our material.

Next we were brought into the Prairie History Room, which was the focus of our tour. The location is small but contains a lot of information. It is not climate controlled and is also placed directly under public washrooms on the second floor, May said that this was one of her primary concerns. If there was ever a disaster (fire, water, etc.) we would lose a lot of valuable resources.

"The Prairie History Room is a specialized collection of non-circulating community history and genealogical materials focusing on the history and peoples of the Northern Great Plains (Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan) from pre-settlement times to present day. The room is located at the Central branch of the Regina Public Library." RPL website

Their primary focus is to collect as much information as possible about the prairies, mainly Saskatchewan. They have a microfilm/form/fiche collection of various journals and historical documents that the public can view with the help of staff, in fact as we were finishing our tour two people came in to view some of these documents. They have a small, but very interesting, yearbook collection that works by donation. May showed us a picture of Shirley Douglas (daughter of Tommy Douglas, mother of Kiefer Sutherland) from one of the yearbooks in the collection. May had prepared a few other things to show us, including the oldest book in the library, oldest book published in Saskatchewan, the illustrated was news (very cool!) and a book of war hero's clippings.

It was a great tour, and as I had never been inside of the prairie history room it was quite interesting to find out what they had there. May obviously loves her job and was very welcoming to the participants.

Social media, libraries and future of print

I'm sure this topic that has been done to death, just another rambling post about social media and libraries right? Probably, as I am quite capable of rambling, but it is something I'd like to write about and explore.

I'm not in any way an expert on social media, nor do I work in a public library, but I do realize the importance of library staff being able to understand and use social media to their advantage. Even from a law library point of view, we have to keep up with the quickly changing trends. Lawyers may  sometimes be seen as the old fogeys who don't adapt, but from what I've seen they are already way ahead of most of us, technology wise.

Although many people don't see it this way, libraries and their staff are the managers of our information and have to constantly update their knowledge on information management. This includes being able to keep the public informed on new media because of our role as teachers to our patrons. 

The most common use of social media in libraries, that I've found, is the use of Facebook. It's basically a ubiquitous tool. If libraries want an online presence (other than their website) that can reach more people, they have to use it. Consider the fact that even though most people say they hate Facebook, they still use it on a daily basis. It's a free service that anyone can learn to use, relatively speaking.

We have to start thinking about information differently, it's no longer static information on a piece of paper in the library. Information is dynamic, flexible and should meet the user's needs. I have always been a little iffy on the future of print material, mainly in the sense that I used to think print would be around forever and always argued with people that said books would be dead soon. I think, for historical purposes, print will be around a while longer because we do need primary sources for research. On the other hand, fiction and textbooks could have a vastly greater impact if they were more online and available to a wider audience.

To backtrack, I said library staff should keep up with current trends in social media. Guy's, I have been a bad library technician. I use Facebook, if only to keep in contact with old friends, but I haven't kept up with other social media websites. In the next few weeks I am challenging myself to learn more about these websites and technologies, and will be posting my thoughts about them. Hopefully some of you will find it interesting.

Weyburn and Yorkton Law Libraries

One picture of all the material we had to throw out in Yorkton

As promised, here is a post about my recent trips to two rural law libraries that are a part of the Law Society of Saskatchewan Libraries.

This summer one of the things I got to do at my new job was visit and clean up two rural libraries in Saskatchewan. The first was in Weyburn. The Weyburn courthouse had just been through a major renovation and the library had been moved to a new location within the courthouse. Because of all these renovations the new books for Weyburn (over 90 boxes!) had all been stacked on the floor of the new room. What wasn't known was that there was some sort of water problem in the basement and all these boxes had been absorbing water for a few weeks when we arrived!

Unfortunately, we had to throw out quite a few boxes which included numerous sets of old law material. With law, the primary sources are the most important, so it was quite a big loss to have to throw out all this valuable material. What we worked on for the next day and a half was throw out all damaged books and re-shelf all the material that was still useful.

The next library I went to was in Yorkton. The Yorkton library was going to need a clean up because the users wanted to turn it into a sort of lounge area with a fireplace (around books?) and big boardroom table. So they asked the LSSL staff to come and re-arrange the books around the perimeter of the room. For a day and a half we recycled most of the old textbook collection and kept the more recent textbooks and some of the old but "pretty" leather bound books. We also worked on relabeling the textbook collection as they were still in the old moys numbers.

Visiting these two libraries was a great experience and I'm glad I was able to participate, even though we had to throw all those books away!

The next few posts will be about some of the old material in the Law Society Library of Regina, my next book club meeting + my book review of my book club selection and maybe even a post about my vacation this week! 

Also me and my library co-workers have issued each other the challenge of keeping an updated blog and so hopefully you will all see an increase in posts here!

My experience in the LIT program at SIAST

I'm currently in the Library and Information Technology program at SIAST here in Saskatoon and so far it's been a pretty interesting experience. 

I started this program in September of 2008 with high hopes: I had just spent a year saving money to move to Saskatoon after a failed year of university in 2006/2007. I joined the program with a group of women of all different ages who had the same interests as me, and for the first time I felt accepted for being who I am by this group of strangers. Finally I could relate to people and discuss issues that I couldn't have brought up in my other groups of friends. I spent a fantastic first year learning about cataloguing, reference, children's literature, young adult literature and going on two placements in school libraries! 

What I didn't know was that I was about to fail three classes and be kicked out of SIAST for a semester.

It felt horrible, and for a while I thought about quitting school for good because this was the second time I had failed out of school and I felt like maybe, it wasn't worth it anymore. Instead of being a "Debbie downer" I decided to come back to school with a better attitude and better time management skills, because I wasn't about to quit something as important to me as this program is.

I passed my three next classes of the second semester of the second year with my first library group. I then came back and joined the new group of Library techs in 2010 and I will graduate with them in May of 2012!

For those of you who don't know, studying to be a Library Technician is incredibly hard and our program in Saskatoon has the most academic classes of any LIT program in the country. It's a challenging field of study that people don't really realize is important to our society.

Yes, this program has caused me incredible amounts of stress, but it has also allowed me to grow as a person and become a mature adult who is accountable for my mistakes.

Interesting stuff at SPL

Since I've moved to Saskatoon, I've mostly been using the Frances Morrison Branch of the Saskatoon Public Library system (their main library branch, located downtown) for when I feel like borrowing books/movies or just going to hang out in the YA section to study.

I recently "liked" SPL on Facebook and have noticed that they keep a very up-do-date online presence. They average from 3 - 5 status updates a day on their library programs, current news issues and visiting authors. (Regina Public Library averages about 1-2 updates a day, but have more followers)

Libraries are always adapting, and seem to have well adapted to our "social networking" future. Something interesting that SPL is currently using is the "library2go" program, where you can download eBooks and audiobooks with your library card on an appropriate electronic device (eBook reader, smart phones, ipad, desktop, mac).

One of the biggest issues I see with the Frances Morrison branch, is that they are badly in need of a new building and have been fighting for a long time to get it. Their building is too small and too old to contain their collection and they do not have enough public support to even be able to bring this issue on the table (although they have tried many times). 

In my Library and Information Technology program, I have learnt the past history of their struggle to get a new building or renovate and they seem to be stuck in a standstill. Either they have suffered from poor planning (I doubt that, these are library people) or roadblocks put in place by government and/or the public.

We, as an informed public, need to support our libraries if we want future generations to view the library as a safe, fun and interesting place to be.

Here are two documents made in 2004 (old, I know) about a Needs Assessment Survey done for SPL by Fast Consulting. 

Brochure: summary of 2004 needs assessment survey

Executive Summary of needs assessment