Sessions & Speakers

A presentation by the director of the MOEB, Anja Borck, doctor of art history, in which she will present the recently updated online archives of the museum. In 2017, the museum made its archives available online, to allow public access to its record and document collections. This presentation will inform the audience about the concept, the realization, the financing, the learning process and the developing results of the long-term project.

hybrid session

When a cataloguer takes on the niche of cataloguing across alphabets, there is an opportunity for much to be lost in translation. Negotiating romanisation, other library staff’s language skills, as well as the integrity of the record, must be considered. The creation of an entirely new system of cataloguing to address this niche was taken on for a children’s collection, a niche within a niche. My presentation will discuss the limiting factors, resources, and skills that are required to make a record more than just a faint echo of what it is in its original language. This and how to make records usable by library staff who do not have a command of the records’ original language.

Join us for an update from the Canadian Federation of Library Associations, including speakers from the CFLA Board, the Copyright Committee, the Cataloguing and Metadata Standards Committee, the Indigenous Matters Committee and the Intellectual Freedom Committee.

This presentation is about comic books – specifically those written and created by Indigenous authors. It is a resource list, of sorts, but it is also an exploration of how to decolonize our collection development practices.

Graphic storytelling as a medium is a form of expression utilized by all that can channel narrative and nonfiction into stories that any culture can create, share, and explore. Diversity audits and inclusive collection development are (thankfully) more commonplace in recent times. Yet the process is important, continuous, and evolving.

How equitable is your collection? How do you meet your clientele’s needs while factoring in authenticity, representation, and a close look at past cataloging practices?

The answer that has served our library is “Start with what you know”. That first step took the form of comic books, graphic novels, and illustrated stories from Indigenous authors and artists. More than just getting new titles, it was a journey of decolonizing our collection and our methods. It was about changing the way collection development happened at our school.

In this presentation, the story of this adventure will be told, resources will be shared, and time to discuss, question, and yes, even scrutinize our best intentions will take place. Before leaving, attendees will have a roadmap forward with their DEIJ efforts, a mindset on how to broach obstacles along the way, and – at the very least – a list of the best and brightest that Indigenous graphic storytelling has to offer.

hybrid session

Découvrez les collections du MEM et ce qui les rend uniques: artéfacts de culture populaire, photos citoyennes et témoignages montréalais qui en font la richesse. Patrimoine de proximité, mémoires de quartiers, grands événements marquants, produits montréalais iconiques, anecdotes du quotidien… Le MEM, c’est tout ça ! Laissez-vous raconter Montréal par la conservatrice du musée, grâce à ces objets exceptionnellement sortis de leur réserve pour l’occasion.

This session is a celebration of the anniversary of John Abbott College’s Information and Library Technologies program, presented by members of the ABQLA John Abbott Student Chapter.

Putting the Pieces Together: Collecting Montreal’s Black Community Newspapers and Periodicals in Special Collections – Natalia Diaz

Since the acquisition of the Negro Community Centre/Charles H. Este Cultural Centre fonds, Concordia Library has continued to grow, preserve, and provide access to the Black history and community archives housed in Special Collection. These archives document the contributions and experiences of Black communities, organizations, and individuals in Quebec. Concordia Library has been using these archives in community events, teaching, research, and exhibitions. As a result, the Library has become a space where the voices and stories of historically marginalized communities can be lifted up and brought to the forefront of research.

This presentation will highlight some of Montreal’s Black community newspapers and periodicals published between the 1960s and 2000s such as Focus Umoja, Uhuru, Montreal Community Contact, and Afro-Can. These publications are a record of Montreal’s anglophone Black community and include local stories of art, education, cultural events, activism, and politics. As these periodicals are scattered across different fonds and collections, like the Negro Community Centre/Charles H. Este Cultural Centre fonds, the Black Studies Centre fonds, the Alfie Roberts and Patricia Cambridge collection, and the Leon Llewellyn fonds, Special Collections is putting the pieces together to list the most complete collections and facilitate the discovery and access of this important material.

Queer Joy Now! Capturing diverse campus histories through institutional and student group partnerships – Julie Morris

Capturing stories about queer and trans organizing on campuses has been an important step in understanding the rich history of radical gathering, socializing, celebrating, organizing, and protesting that has happened in our region. Queer Joy Now! A Dusting off of Histories is an archiving and participatory exhibition project created in partnership with The 203 Center for Gender and Sexual Diversity that seeks to celebrate and uplift the history of queer and trans organizing on campuses in Fredericton, New Brunswick. We wish to understand: What does it mean to take up joyful queer space?

This presentation highlights the Queer Joy Now! archival project and its significance to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, The 203 Centre, and the Queer Heritage Initiative of New Brunswick (QHINB). It discusses the exhibition details and content, theory and insights derived from the archival project, and give advice for partnering on archival history projects with student groups.

Partnerships have been critical to creating this exhibition. As such, we will highlight the relevance of creating and sustaining partnerships across campus, particularly between underserved student groups and the institutional archives, to capture diverse and important narratives. We hope to start a dialogue about what activism and joy mean on campus and in our local communities, and how the GLAM sector can be an integral part of this knowledge building process.

In this presentation, we will tell the story of how we led our college community to fold 3,000 origami cranes in the name of Hope and Peace.

The Marianopolis Crane Project unfolded between August 2019 and December 2023. In our 30-minute presentation, we will explain the objectives of the Project, show how we linked community and student-led linked activities to important milestones, and outline our flexible and open-ended planning process. We will detail how the project evolved over four years, and how we navigated the challenges of the provincial lockdown period.

We will reveal how we used the paper cranes to voice our community’s wishes for Hope and Peace on a global stage. We will share images of the cranes, and tell you how 2,000 of these cranes now live in Japan! We will discuss how we offered these cranes to our students as a place to express their hopes, to put their dreams into words, and to communicate messages to family, and old and new friends. Finally, we will unveil how hundreds of these vibrant, good wishes now fly over our heads every day in the main hall of the Marianopolis College Library.

hybrid session

Développée en collaboration par l’équipe du service national du Récit, domaine des langues, et Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, le projet BaladoWeb propose une immersion dans le monde captivant de la production de balados. Nous offrons au personnel enseignant des ressources pédagonumériques afin d’accompagner leurs élèves dans une démarche complète de production de balados, de la conception à la diffusion. Le projet met l’accent sur la créativité, la pertinence culturelle ainsi que le développement de compétences numériques et informationnelles.

hybrid session

How do we get books to incarcerated people in Canada? What barriers do people face, and how can we as information professionals increase access?

Reading and learning are essential. Everyone must have access to information: for pleasure, for education, for connection to the world. This talk will contain a brief overview of the laws that govern the sending of books to prisoners in

Canada and the history of books-to-prisoner projects. We will also discuss our process of remote reference interviews, censorship, and answer any questions ABQLA members might have about access to literature and information in Canadian prisons.

Who are the users and how will they find it? This year’s practicum focused on improving accessibility to the ABQLA archives. The creation of a new finding aid and the digitization of the ABQLA bulletins marks a major step towards consolidating the association’s paper and digital archives. Practicum student, Kevin Mancini shares his experiences on working in the archives and laying the foundation for what the archive can become.

Les bibliothécaires système ne sont pas seulement des spécialistes des systèmes. Iels servent aussi de courroie de transmission de l’information entre le fournisseur de SIGB et les équipes qui l’utilisent. D’un côté viennent les mises à jour et les changements technologiques, de l’autre, les demandes d’amélioration, les questions techniques par rapport à l’outil et sur les questions de procédures et modalités de circulation.

En tant que bibliothécaire ayant principalement travaillé dans des réseaux de 10 bibliothèques et plus, je constate que le partage d’information est un défi constant et commun à tous les milieux, que ce soit en bibliothèque publique ou universitaire. Ce n’est pas parce que nous sommes entourés d’outils technologiques pour communiquer que tous les membres des équipes réussissent à trouver l’information qui est utile à leurs tâches.

Nouvellement bibliothécaire à l’Université McGill, la recherche fait désormais officiellement partie de mes responsabilités. J’espère creuser davantage le sujet du partage des connaissances dans les équipes en bibliothèque. La littérature foisonne de documentation sur les outils à utiliser et des principes de base de la gestion des connaissances, mais je veux récolter les meilleurs expériences de collaboration entre les différentes équipes de travail et les surtout les plus efficaces. Je souhaiterais donc partager mon expérience avec d’autres professionnel.le.s de l’information afin de débuter un processus de recherche plus officiel.

Background: In everyday life, parents must navigate an oversaturated health information landscape that is further complicated by misinformation and increasingly mediated by digital technology. This parental health information behaviour (HIB) has implications for health beliefs, behaviours, and outcomes more generally, shaping how and when parents seek healthcare services for their children and how they engage in informed decision-making with healthcare professionals. Information professionals, in turn, rely upon research in this domain to shape collections and service provision. Objective: The purpose of this narrative literature review was to examine the current state of research on parental HIB in the proxy context, including study populations of focus and characteristics of, and mitigating factors in, information seeking, evaluation, storage, and use. This was used to outline a conceptual framework for parental HIB and to identify opportunities for future research. Method: A total of 40 studies (published between 1998 and 2023) were reviewed in early 2024 to identify study characteristics, and they underwent inductive thematic analysis and coding. Results: The literature, which focuses largely on mothers, suggests that there is high engagement in HIB worldwide across study populations. While libraries were often dismissed as sources of child health information in these studies, a distinct preference for both interpersonal and internet-based information sources in other contexts was evidenced. Related to this, surveillance, bias, and stigma were noted in a majority of studies as social factors that disrupt typical information behaviours and contribute to defensive seeking and information avoidance. Conclusions: This review ultimately found pronounced underrepresentation of fathers (and parental dyads) within the existing parental HIB literature, mirroring social exclusion of fathers from parenting spaces more generally. Further research is necessary to explore HIB of fathers, collective HIB in parental dyads, and LIS practice implications.

DRAW stands for Data Rescue Archives and Weather, it is a participatory archive that relies on volunteers to transcribe a hundred years of historic weather data recorded at McGill University since 1863. The DRAW social media accounts have been posting incredible original content for over two years. This content includes blog posts, newsletters, images, occasional videos and even poetry. However, the social media following was not growing and the followers DRAW does have were not engaging with the posts. It seemed like no one was hearing what the DRAW account was trying to say. My practicum project involves finding out why DRAW is struggling to find its social media audience and building a social media strategy to have DRAW’s voice heard. The first steps of this project involved carefully analysing the past DRAW social media posts to identify the past strategy and see what worked, what didn’t and where there were gaps. The next steps involved identifying the DRAW demographic based on information available in the one social media account that offered follower insights followed by market research on the top 10 Canadian social media apps to identify those best suited to DRAW. Following this analysis I was able to recommend that DRAW retire one social media account and create a new account on a different platform. Crucially the analysis phase allowed for the identification of one primary area where DRAW could improve which was community engagement through following other accounts and liking/commenting on their content. I am now in the process of building a social media strategy to reach the target demographic and engage with them.

The MEM’s free exhibition spaces include their permanent collection, as well as  “A Mile in My Shoes,” a collaboration with Empathy Museum, where you can explore a shoe store full of stories about the owners of different pairs of shoes.

These spaces will be available to you throughout the day of the conference.

The paid exhibition at the moment is “Detours – Urban Experiences,” an immersive video exhibition that lets you experience the worlds of different Montrealers. The total duration of the exhibition is approximately 90 minutes.

You can buy tickets for the paid exhibits on the day of the conference (the group rate ticket is $10.30).