Final Fieldnote

This will be my final post to Fieldnotes from Library School. And really, it's about time: I completed my Master of Information degree requirements in December 2010. Now that I am here, at the end of the program, I realize that I haven't posted nearly as much as I thought I would about the Master of Information program itself. Instead, most of my posts seem to be about the extra-curricular stuff. Conferences, work, etc. And I guess that is part of the beauty of the program. The opportunities to get involved in things outside of courses. Engage.

That's not to say that classes weren't also great. My favorites, hands down, were:

• INF 1320 Introduction to Bibliographic Control (the "theoretical" version with Professor Jens-Erik Mai)
• INF 1004 Document Formats and Standards (with Professor Hockema) and INF 1004 Information Management Systems for Software Code (with Professor Takhteyev)
• INF 2136 Government Documents and INF 2115 Data Librarianship (with Professor McCaffrey)

The best news is that I have recently been hired on a one year contract as a librarian at the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) Library.  This is an amazing opportunity and one that I am really looking forward to. I mean, what better place to cut your teeth as a new academic librarian (where part of the role is instruction) than in an institute focused on teaching, pedagogy, and information delivery? Amazing.

So, all that to say that this will be my last post to this blog. Library school is done and I am embarking on new adventures. Maybe a new blog is in order  . . .  (grin).

Launch of Information Services Booklet

Treats at the launch.

On January 21, 2011, the Information Services (IS) team held a launch party for the Information Services promotional booklet that we created over the summer of 2010. Although Kathleen (Outreach and Instructional Services Coordinator), Angie (my fellow IS intern), and I coordinated the project, the booklet itself is really a collaborative effort of the entire IS team.

The booklet is comprised of completely original writing and artwork created by members of Information Services. In this way, it really promotes IS resources and services in the voices of the people who envision, develop, and delivers these services to the Faculty of Information community. We're pretty proud of this little in-house project.

Print copies of the booklet.

So, the launch on Friday was a great way for us to celebrate and share our vision with faculty members of the iSchool community. There are some limited edition print copies floating around, but you can also see a flash version of the booklet on the Faculty of Information's web site at www.uoft.me/g0

For me, this launch was also a great way to wrap up my time as a student at the iSchool (I completed my M. I. degree requirements in December) and also my time as a student assistant with the Information Services team at the Faculty of Information's Inforum. The IS booklet is a great representation of the amazing people I have come to know on the IS team as well as everything I have learned (so far!) about what it means to be a librarian and what it means to provide meaningful services and resources to our library constituents. Cheers!

Introduction to NVivo 9

Thanks to everyone who came out to one of the two NVivo 9 workshops offered through the Information Services instructional workshop series. I really enjoyed learning about your research projects and plans. It was nice to see so many people interested in qualitative data analysis.

If you couldn't make it, you can get the handout from the Faculty of Information's new Workshop Repository by clicking here. The information I include in the handout touches on some of the NVivo 8 issues I wrote about on July 11, 2010.

Finally, if you haven't already, please take a few moments to fill out the online evaluation survey by clicking here. Your feedback is super important to those of us running the workshops.

All the best with your QDA projects!