News from Prince Edward Island
Submitted by Dawn Hooper
Provincial Library Service
Contributed by Nichola Cleaveland
Staff Changes
Rebecca Boulter has been appointed to the new position of Literacy and Public Services Librarian in the Provincial Library Service. Rebecca holds a Bachelors degree from UPEI and a Masters in Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. Most recently Rebecca was Assistant Chief Librarian at the James McConnell Memorial Library in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Rebecca will be coordinating literacy and public service initiatives for the PLS and also assumes responsibility for Summerside Rotary Library where her office is located. Rebecca will start in her new position on December 15. Welcome, Rebecca!
Systems Librarian Larry Tweed will be on secondment to Holland College Library Services for the next eight months. We wish him well during his time with our colleagues at Holland College.
New Library under Construction
Construction of the new Montague and Area Wellness Centre (or as we think of it, the new location for the Montague Public Library!) is well underway. The facility is scheduled for completion next summer, in time for the 2009 Canada Summer Games.
TD Canadian Children’s Book Week
Visiting author Cora Taylor was very busy during the week, holding readings at four public libraries and visiting 10 schools. Everywhere she went, she greeted her audience with enthusiasm, and they responded in kind. She encouraged questions at every stop, and was deluged with questions from
her audiences. Cora had never been to PEI before, and with her visit here can now say she has been to every province in Canada. The early winter weather was a challenge, but did not stop Cora from visiting all 14 destinations on her tour. Her return home was delayed by one day, the first time in 20 years that a visiting CCBW author has had to “stay over” in PEI.
In conjunction with TD Canadian Children's Book Week, Grade One students will receive a copy of Gilles Tibo’s Too many books! / Des livres pour Nicolas! under the TD Grade One Book Giveway Program. The books are forwarded to each of our branch libraries. Library staff contact local grade 1 class(es) and invite them to visit the library to pick up their books. The free book is also available to grade one students who are home schooled.
ACADEMIC LIBRARIES
UPEI Robertson Library
http://library.upei.ca/
Contributed by Suzanne Jones
The Library is participating in its usual Food for Fines whereby overdue fines are forgiven with a donation of foodstuffs to the student food bank.
Donald Moses has returned to the Robertson Library on a nine-month contract. Donald will be supervising the IslandLives project – which will begin digitizing community histories dating from the mid-1800’s to the present day. The search interface for IslandLives will allow users to search content by name, community, time period, and keyword.
On December 2nd, the Library and the Office of the Vice-President of Research & Development jointly will launch the IslandScholar Repository. This repository is built on open source software allowing faculty publications to be more easily accessible. Initially, this digital repository will contain faculty-deposited publications with the ability to also add theses and research data later. You can see our early efforts at: http://islandscholar.ca
Our digitization technology capacity also continues to grow dramatically, with three new scanning units -- a large-format "overhead" scanner, a book scanner, and a microfilm scanner -- all installed in the past six months.
The Library has recently completed the digitization of all six decades (1909 - 1969) of The Red & White, the St. Dunstan's University campus magazine, and of the full print back-file (1976 - 2007) of The Island Magazine, an internationally acclaimed journal of PEI heritage and culture.
Holland College
http://www.hollandcollege.com/library
Contributed by Andrea Stewart
Holland College launched a new and improved website this fall which included a whole new look for the Library Services web pages (http://www.hollandcollege.com/library). We have incorporated SubjectsPlus into the website which allows us to dynamically manage our subject guides, A to Z list of databases, staff lists, and Library FAQs. On the database front, we have recently added the Conference Board of Canada e-Library to our complement.
The College’s digital archives continue grow as library staff add more and more documents (http://archives.hollandcollege.com). The collection now contains 512 objects [over 8000 images and 9 media clips]. We are very pleased with the progress and the positive reviews.
Holland College Library Services wishes Donald Moses the best of luck in his secondment to UPEI Robertson Library as the Coordinator of the Island Lives project. We are pleased to welcome Larry Tweed as our new Librarian at the Charlottetown Centre campus. Larry is taking a secondment from the Provincial Library Service where he has worked as the Systems Librarian for the past seven years.
