And they Run for the Cure, too!

Congratulations to the 177 runners & walkers of the 2008 Librarians Run for the Cure Team!

Reporting on the results and dishing out the kudos is National Team Captain Pam Ryan:

Over $100,000 raised in 5 years!

With $29,282 raised in 2008, we met our $100,000 5-year fundraising goal with our grand total of $101,262.

Our 2008 team had 177 members participating at 18 run sites across Canada. The Ottawa-Gatineau team was the largest with 22 members and the Edmonton team had the highest fundraising at $8029.

Our 2008 top 5 individual fundraisers were:

Vieri Berretti (Edmonton) - $3639
Jan Brett (Guelph) - $1280
Randy Reichardt (Edmonton) - $940
Julie McKenna (Regina) - $750
Margaret Kirkpatrick (Ottawa-Gatineau) - $700

A big thanks to all team members and a special thanks to our run site Team Captains:
Joanna Aegard (Thunder Bay), Jocelyne Andrews (Montreal), Kandise Brown (Halifax), Cathy Freer-Leszczynski (Calgary), Lisa Hagan (Hamilton/Burlington), Kim Hebig (Saskatoon), Julie McKenna (Regina), Heather Moodie (Sault Ste. Marie), Christy Sich (London), Catherine Steeves (Guelph), Danielle Winn (Windsor), Alexandra Yarrow (Ottawa - Gatineau), and Lingbo Yan (Vancouver).

See you all next year!
Pam

The NLIP-IG was represented across Canada, we know, but in Edmonton, Angie Mandeville (l., past IG co-convenor) and Sarah Polkinghorne (r., current IG co-convenor) braved the bone-chilling damp.

Given: new professionals need to meet other professionals. Volunteering and fundraising are inherently important activities, of course, but we humbly submit that they are also excellent ways to meet people. Connect on a national level (witness the Librarians Run for the Cure facebook group) or on a community level (pick up a hammer, for example). If professional small talk doesn't feel like your strong suit at this point, that's okay: shared effort eases conversation.

What's your library or group doing? If you let us know, we'll help spread the word.

In top photo: Randy Reichardt. Photos courtesy Sandy Bugeja. Posted with permission.

Here we are.

There are hundreds of millions of abandoned blogs. Contrary to the impression you might have from its recent history, this blog is not one of them. As of today, this blog is back. To those who've kept clicking over to this blog from the CLA Website and from the NLIP-IG Facebook group: thank you for your (astonishing) persistence. We promise never to keep silent so long again.

Who's "we"? The NLIP-IG has two new convenors: Dagmara Chojecki and me, Sarah Polkinghorne. Let me introduce you to Dagmara.

Dagmara notched both a BA (Art History, 2005) and an MLIS (2007) from McGill University onto her belt before hitching it up and heading out west. In Edmonton, Dagmara, with her arts & languages backgrounds, proved her consummate adaptability by thriving at the John W. Scott Health Sciences Library as a member of the University of Alberta Libraries' Academic Library Internship program. This assignment in health sciences librarianship was a match for the ages. She's currently the Knowledge Management Officer with the Knowledge Utilization Studies Program (KUSP), a research unit within the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta. Dagmara will be presenting her work with LOCKSS at the NetSpeed Conference later in October, but if you have to miss her there, you can reach her at dagmara dot chojecki at nurs dot ualberta dot ca.

We'll be rolling out the NLIP-IG's 2008-2009 year here over the next few weeks (conference event plans, mentorship opportunities, etc.). Get in touch, won't you?

Conference Season

Being that conference season is fast upon us here we were hoping some of our readers out there (and I know we have some....gotta love those sitemeters) would be willing to post comments on their conference experiences and advice. I think it can be challenging to try and decide what conference would benefit you the most and what you should absolutely do when you get to said conference.

So in April I will be heading out to Jasper for the Alberta Library Conference. I think its important to attend provicial conferences for the excellent local networking experiences. It builds strong relationships between institutions and the people you meet there can be excellent source of information and advice throughout your career. I am also going to the CLA conference in Vancouver in May. I think this conference is a great venue to explore issues profession wide. You are able to meet people from across the country and you have your pick of sessions on such a variety of topics. I would absolutely recommend everyone attend the First Timers Breakfast as it is the ideal way to start out your conference experience.

So what about the rest of you?

Did we miss this? HR Summit to be held in June

Wow I am a little behind here! But I happen to be reading through some press releases and I think this one seem to have slipped under my radar in December. Of course results from meetings like this are always relevant to our group as many of you will be these "future leaders". I think it should be an interesting follow up from the 8R's report in 2005. Direct from the CLA website:

Canadian library community planning Summit on human resources

"Canada’s leading library stakeholders are addressing one of the key issues in the field by planning a major national summit on human resources. The 2008 Library Human Resources Summit will bring together an invited group of participants, who represent key associations, employers, government officials, and other stakeholders in the Canadian library community. The Summit will develop a national strategy and action plans to ensure that Canadian libraries will have the great leadership we will need in our librarians and information professionals, in order to meet Canada’s knowledge and information management needs in the first three decades of the 21st century."

Click here to read then entire press release.

Librarian - best career in 2008

Librarian made the U.S. News & World Report's list for best careers in 2008. Wootwoot! And I'm sure there are some librarians/info specialists out there working as Usability/User Experience Specialists, another top job. Thanks for the heads up on this, SCP!

Welcome to 2008!

Hopefully your holiday season was filled with fun, food and relaxation. Now its back to the old "nose to the grind stone". Here's an interesting idea from U of A. The CLA Student Chapter had a great idea for the holiday season. They held a book drive for Santas Anonymous in December. According to the update they provided on Jerome-L:

"We collected 65 books and raised $217 to buy an additional 24 books, totaling 89 books. We'd also like to thank Greenwoods Bookshoppe who gave us a discount on the books we bought and donated an additional 36 books as well as many galley copies."

What a great way to give back. Feel free to send Angie or myself any interesting news stories from your student chapter and we would be happy to post them to this blog!