News from Prince Edward Island

Submitted by Dawn Hooper

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Provincial Library Service
Contributed by Nichola Cleaveland

Floating Collections

The Provincial Library Service has recently implemented floating collections, which permits items to float freely among locations. Items stay at the location where they are checked in and movement of materials is determined by patron holds. Benefits of floating collections include refreshed collections, reduced delivery costs, reduction in time spent in transit, better use of staff time, fewer repetitive strain injuries, and increased circulation. 

TD Canadian Children’s Book Week

TD Canadian Children's Book Week will take place the week of November 15th to 22nd. In honour of the 100th anniversary of L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, the theme for this year’s celebrations is “Classic Canadian Reading/ Lire les classiques canadiens”. Our visiting author this year is Cora Taylor from Edmonton, Alberta. Cora has written 17 children's titles. While on the Island, Cora will hold four public library readings in Charlottetown, Summerside, Georgetown and Morell. Cora will also be visiting schools on the island. 

Forum atlantique sur l’alphabétisation francophone

The first Forum atlantique sur l’alphabétisation francophone was held in Moncton on September 19th and 20th. The Société Nationale de l’Acadie (SNA) invited 50 people from different organizations in the Atlantic provinces to come together to discuss the subject of adult literacy in the region. PLS French Services Librarian Jean-François Savaria was one of the participants in the Forum. 

Readers’ Advisory in a Day

Public service staff will attend a readers’ advisory course in October. The day-long course “Readers’ Advisory in a Day” will provide new and seasoned staff with skills and techniques to help patrons discover their next great read. Filled with lots of practical information and a toolbox of tips, this course will help staff learn new ways to serve readers and enhance skills essential in connecting readers and books. Peggy Malcom from the Southern Ontario Library Service will deliver the course. 

Tutor Training Program

The Confederation Centre Public Library offers an ESL Tutor Training Program to volunteers who speak English and enjoy meeting people from different cultures. To date, 75 volunteers have taken the 14-hour training program. Many of these volunteers are now working with learners, either as one-on-one tutors or as leaders of conversation circles. The next training session will be held in November. This program is a partnership between the Provincial Library Services and the PEI Association for Newcomers to Canada. 

PEI Book Award Winners Announced

The PEI Books Awards ceremony was held on September 10th. The prize for Fiction was awarded to Shape of things to come by Richard Lemm, for Non-fiction, La mi-carême en Acadie by Georges Arsenault, and for Poetry, Beautiful veins by Joseph Sherman.

ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

UPEI Robertson Library
http://library.upei.ca
Contributed by Suzanne Jones

On September 26th, the Library débuted its new relief sculpture in its main entrance. Gerald Beaulieu, the artist, was also present to meet attendees and respond to questions. The art piece is entitled Stacks and displays tumbling books -- liberating the ideas found in books, in general.  

Mark Leggott and the liaison librarians began scheduled update meetings with the faculty departments in September. Specifically, the goal was to present the new CRKN databases but the meetings also encourage questions and discussions about all the services the Library provides. A great opportunity to promote and explain what the Library can do!

Renovations will soon be taking place in the Library’s lobby. The Information and Circulation Desk services will be offered from the current Circulation Desk. A small coffee shop and a few comfy chairs will be placed where the Information Desk had been previously. This is an experimental arrangement: issues such as increased noise and workflows will be monitored to see what our next steps will be.

Speaking of noise, one of our sunrooms is going electronic-devices free! Some patrons noted that the continual clicking of laptops and PCs were interfering with their ability to concentrate. Acting on this, the Library will be designating a device-free quiet zone on our main floor. And we are curious to see how many students will head for this designated space.

The Library held a book sale on September 26 and 27. Total intake was almost $900.00 which was shared with the Business Society students who helped organize the sale. Thanks to everyone who volunteered their time!

The Library is already contributing code to a number of open source projects after our recent spate of implementations. We have recently posted changes we made to the Evergreen system to provide more accessible linked subject headings and excerpts from the Google Books project. With Fedora, we have released the first version of our Drupal-Fedora module, which is available at http://vre.upei.ca/dev/islandora.

Chris Bulman (Digitization technician) and Simon Lloyd (Spec. Collections librarian) travelled to Fredericton to attend the Fall Institute in Digital Libraries and Humanities (Fidlh) Convention (September 25-27). This convention examined XML markup language, digital imaging, data conversions, and the Open Journal System (OJS).  

After a little more than three years, and on the heels of a goodbye staff barbeque, Louise Mould, our Cataloguing & Metadata librarian finished working here at the end of September. Thanks, Louise, for all your hard work! It’s been a pleasure.

Four Library staff members (Grant Johnston, Paul Pound, Melissa Belvadi, and Chris MacLauchlan) attended the mind-whirling, library/technology Access 2008 conference in Hamilton from Oct. 1st to 4th. (Note: Access 2009 will be here on P.E.I. next year!)

Starting October 6, there will be IT students sharing their expertise at the Information Desk, working side-by-side with Library personnel. This will hopefully address some of the increasing demand for technology support as the campus continues it advances in technology integration.

Holland College
http://www.hollandc.pe.ca/library/
Contributed by Donald Moses

Enrollments are at an all time high at Holland College and Library Services greeted these students by hosting Video-Game-A-Palooza, a video game and pizza night at the main campus library. The event was well attended and everyone had fun playing Rock Band and mixing it up in the virtual boxing ring on the Wii. The beginning of the semester has been busy with orientations, instruction, updating and revising content, and preparing for the launch of the library's new website. Stay tuned!

Library Services launched their digital archives pilot project, funded with an internal "President's Innovation Grant" in September to coincide with the launch of a book that tells the story of the College's founding and early history - A Record of Achievement - Holland College the First 25 Years . The digital archives project focused on capturing some of the milestone documents in the College's history including yearbooks, tabloids, letters, memos, sound and video clips, etc. The collection can be viewed at http://archives.hollandcollege.com/ and currently contains 213 objects [over 5000 images and 6 media clips]. Library staff will continue to add to the archive throughout the fall and winter months.
 
Holland College Library Services wishes Melissa Josey the best of luck as she takes up her new duties as the Information Officer with Holland College's Admissions Office. If you came to APLA 2008 in Charlottetown you may have met Melissa - she was the registrar for the 2008 conference. We are pleased to welcome Leslie Holt-Dalziel, our new Library Technician at the Charlottetown Centre campus.

GOVERNMENT LIBRARIES

Prince Edward Island Legislative Library and Research Service
Contributed by Laura Morrell

It’s been an exciting year at the Legislative Assembly since the re-establishment of a legislative library service was approved in September 2007. The library’s two staff members - Laura Morrell, Research Librarian, and Ryan Conway, Research Officer – have hit the ground running, building a responsive, quality library and research service for members.

The Legislative Library officially opened on May 22, 2008, with a reception for members and House staff after four months of renovations and office construction. The number of research requests to the library has been growing steadily over the past few months until we hit our first ‘at capacity’ week the end of September. Reports to standing committees on current issues have also kept the service busy.
The Legislative Library provides timely, confidential, non-partisan research to its core service group, the members of the Legislative Assembly, and supports the staff of the Legislative Assembly in outreach and administrative projects. To that end, the Library has gathered a core collection of documents that includes annual reports from departments, commissions, agencies, and boards; budgets and fiscal estimates; statistical reports; electoral information; and a small collection of public policy, agricultural, and reference works. Currently, the Library also has research partners in the PEI Collection at the University of Prince Edward Island, which has an extensive historical collection of Prince Edward Island publications, and in the Government Services Library, which has a historical and current collection of Prince Edward Island government documents, a collection of public policy and public administration books, and a selective collection of federal government publications.

We’re looking forward to seeing what we can offer during the next session of the House – and celebrating our first anniversary in the spring!

NRC Information Centre - Charlottetown
Contributed by Kim MacInnis

Kim MacInnis has accepted a term position with the NRC Information Centre at the Institute for Nutrisciences and Health in Charlottetown. She will be acting as Head of the Information Centre until the end of December while Shirley MacLeod continues in her role as Acting Coordinator - NRC Information Services - Atlantic Region>