Want to be a volunteer librarian for the PanAm Games? (urgh)

Yesterday my friend Makeda, another fine Toronto librarian, pointed me to this ‘hilarious’ (not) posting for the PanAm Games

Here’s the logo for the PanAm Games that I definitely don’t have permission to use!

Yes, they are looking for a volunteer Digital Asset Librarian to “manage and maintain TO2015′s digital media library.”

Don’t worry…a library degree is not required (or even mentioned!).

Key responsibilities:  manage discovery and collection of all TO2015 digital media assets, assign and maintain metadata architecture, develop digital workflows, other responsibilities as assigned. Ability to speak French and Spanish desired. And lots of other things too.

Wow, it sounds like a job you’d want a librarian doing.

I live with a digital asset librarian.  His job is one that requires a lot of thoughtfulness, a lot of consultation, and a lot of patient teaching. Surprise! Good metadata is not something that’s widely appreciated, though the end results (hey, you can totally find what you need!) usually is. His job is a lot of work…for instance, a full time job (you can read about it here). The fact that he is paid and will stay in this position for the foreseeable future is a really good thing for the organization.

No hours or length of this ‘contract’ are specified…but with that list of responsibilities this can’t be a quick gig. This person is not tagging and uploading content under the supervision of a librarian à la everyone’s library school practicum ever. This poor librarian-of-a-sort will be will be reporting directly to the Director of Communications Operations. 

Does the PanAm games actually care at all about maintaining a digital asset library? It doesn’t seem like it, so why are they posting for this position? Who are they imagining will apply for this ‘job’ and then stick it out?

This is so obnoxious. My urge towards rhetorical flourish makes me want to add words like infuriating, offensive, disgusting, ridiculous etc., but I really don’t want to waste any more time thinking about this/possibly having to justify my hyperbole.

PS Makeda has also pointed out that while PanAm videographers and photographers are also volunteer positions, the mascots will be paid. Good thing the job also requires a sense of humour. 

Some quick thoughts on Daniel Caron’s departure

So, Daniel Caron has left Library and Archives Canada, and not many people are sorry to see him go.

I’m certainly not, but I do have some feelings other than glee.

I really, really hope this wasn’t about the $5000 of public money he spent on Spanish lessons.

Shout out to all the librarians getting professional development money. I do. That means some combination of student tuition and government money pays for hotels and meals as well as conference registration fees. There’s no sweet private sector kick-backs, save the occasional drink ticket via ProQuest (but then you still have to stand in that bar line!) , but as my partner who works in the proper-public sector and never gets funding for any PD stuff reminds me, I am dang lucky. LAC collects materials in a lot of languages. It don’t think it’s absurd for someone who speaks English and French to seek out Spanish next. And I’m not entirely convinced it’s awful for us to pay for it.

But more importantly: if he’s stepped down over $5000 in mis-spent education money then we have lost this battle. It means he will never step down because:

• he put into place a Code of Conduct that was somewhere between Big Brother and Monty Python in its outrageousness
• he consistently said there weren’t enough skilled people to work at LAC, while getting rid of said people
• under his watch, LAC closed interlibrary loan services despite having one of the most unique collections in the country
• LAC seems to have abandoned its goal of becoming a Trusted Digital Repository
• he trumpets a digitization strategy that sounded like it was from 1999
• have you heard that equally compelling social media strategy?
• etc.

So: I’m not sure why he stepped down, but given the way the Experimental Lakes Project, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Environment Canada, and National Research Council have all be eliminated/renamed/broken lately, I’m skeptical that Caron was fired for having ‘the wrong vision.’

James Moore has publicly stood behind LAC’s ‘modernization.’ More importantly he’s a Tory cabinet minister. Who will be chosen to run LAC next? Surely someone who can fall right into line.

I’m not convinced LAC needs a librarian at the top. You’d never know it from the way we talk (and talk and talk and talk) about our importance at conferences, but there are people other than librarians who understand the values of librarianship, and some of them are also good at managing large organizations (there are librarians who are good at this too, of course).

What we need is an advocate, and I have very little hope that we’ll get one.

You’re going to submit to OLA Superconference, right?

Soooooo. I am the co-planner for OLA Superconference 2014‘s technology division, OLITA ,and I would really like you to submit a proposal. Yes, you, gentle librarian, who’s all “I don’t know anything techy!” or “wahh I work in a very specific type of library!”

Here is the call for proposals. We’re interested in presentations on tech-in-the-library quite broadly. Are you repurposing software? Wading into text mining? Teaching your users to print in 3D? Enhancing your distance ed support? Work at a university? College? Public library? Hospital library? Special library (solo librarians, I know you’re doing something cool)? We want your talks!

Look over the call, then send me an email if you have any questions about how your brilliant idea might fit into Superconference. Don’t worry about the 75 minute session blocks. We can pair you up, no problem.

I’m pretty sure this is the biggest library conference in Canada. It’s big! And Toronto is fun! Yup, even in February.

Urbanist films at Hot Docs 2013

When I first started covering Hot Docs for Spacing I was a library school student. As the festival happens near the end of April, I was a library school student with a very open schedule. I went to see everything! I would see like seventy movies and every.single.one was killer.

(Now I am an old employed person and I scramble to watch screeners and post about them beforehand.)

Here is my shortlist of urbanist-related (loosely) films. Myself and Marco Avolio will be reviewing some of them on the Spacing blog in the next few weeks. 

(But God, just GO SEE EVERYTHING)

TIP  just because something has gone rush (i.e. sold out) doesn’t mean you won’t get in–they set aside a lot of industry/media tickets, and there are always people who don’t show. So: stand in line! Stand in line and don’t look at your phone! Wicked people stand in line for movies. 

PS: Students & seniors see movies free during the day.

ACRL 2013 Notes

The Association of College & Research Libraries conference happened last week in Indianapolis. That town is a leeeetle dull, but luckily the conference itself was great (and kept very long hours).

As the cliche goes, the people I met (many from OCUL!) were the highlight of the conference (did you know that Hampshire College has a Critical Social Inquiry Librarian? She is awesome.) The program itself was excellent.  Most of the sessions I attended were on some combination of information literacy and scholarly communication, and my notes are here. 

I didn’t realize how public-service focussed ACRL was. There was very little on e-resources, licensing, or library tech. Our own session, meant to showcase ‘technology-related innovation in the library‘ felt not-quite-properly pitched to the audience, though I think it went well:

 

I did manage to spend a couple of hours at THATCamp, the Humanaties and Technology unconference full-day extravaganza. In the afternoon my group wrote a short pitch document on why faculty should be interested in undergraduate publishing.  One group put together a Digital Humanities eBook in an hour. Another  spent all day working on an information literacy MOOC (not sure where the notes on that are). It was a very productive format.

(OCUL: this must happen here.)

And now here’s a picture of chicken and waffles. Love u, America.

Projexity and Democracy

Today on Metro Morning, there was a short feature on Projexity, a “new and better way for anyone to initiate and manage neighborhood improvement projects.” This is a pretty great idea, but I feel some hesitation at the way it’s being billed as a tool for “democratizing urban change.”

Is this a much-needed tool for organizing communities? Yes! Is the Market 707 patio (their first Toronto project) a worthwhile thing to contribute to? Absolutely!

But if your ‘vote’ is contingent on getting financial backing, then it’s not a democratic process, it’s just crowd-sourcing. There are only certain neighbourhoods that are going to be able to do this. Fine, that’s how it goes. Can projects be proposed and funded in low income neighbourhoods? I guess so. But if the locals can’t fund the project, then how much say will they get? 

That doesn’t mean it’s not a perfectly legitimate way to do get.shit.done in a city that spends all of this time going back-and forth about plastic bags, non-existent subways, and Hero Burger. It’s merely the branding that makes me uncomfortable. 

PS: 1% of funds gathered from successful projects goes into the Projexity Improvement Fund, “driving revitalization to areas of the city that need it most.” That’s cool.

The Buck Stops Where, Minister?

Last night a few of my esteemed colleagues got into a discussion with Heritage Minister James Moore about the Library and Archives Canada Code of Conduct (editorialized here), and about his reaction to criticism from the opposition.

Minister Moore was accused of being ‘Orwellian’ in the House of Commons, and of using Doublespeak on Twitter. Pretty grand accusations, but they’re coming with context.

History comes up a lot in these conversations; preserving our history is after all the mandate of LAC, though one they seem less and less interested in. 

The second kind of history at play here is the more recent history of the Conservative Party squashing dissent, cutting off funding for programs and services that do not line up with their ideology, of being the party of groveling, weak backbenchers, the party with an Accountability Office who won’t give its own Parliamentary Budget Officer access to budget documents. This is the party that cancelled the long form census because it was ‘too intrusive,’ instead suggesting that a voluntary census could be statistically valid.

Anyway, I could go on…

To read a government organization’s code of conduct and see such tidbits as:

“As public servants, our duty of loyalty to the Government of Canada and its elected officials extends beyond our workplace to our personal activities”

and

 “LAC employees may be asked by third parties to teach or to speak at or be a guest at conferences as a personal activity or part-time employment. Such activities have been identified as high-risk to LAC and to the employee with regard to conflict of interest, conflict of duties and duty of loyalty”

is, with recent history in mind, pretty chilling.  While LAC’s draconian code of conduct may have been developed outside of any government oversight, it sure sounds familiar.

I appreciate the minister’s willingness to engage on Twitter last night, but let’s be honest – he basically just said “you’re an idiot and that’s not my problem” over and over again.

May I suggest that the Heritage Minister MAKE this his problem?