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See you at Conference!

NLIP-IG has assembled a little guide to affordable destinations in Montreal. Here are some members' favourites! If you're on site at the Conference, you can pick up a print copy at the hospitality table, or at the First Timers' Breakfast tomorrow morning. See you there!

Patati Patata (4177 St-Laurent | Tel.: (514) 844-0216 )
Tiny place, tiny prices, and tiny burgers ...but with big taste! Located on trendy St. Laurent Boulevard this burger joint is a must for any hipster and has been voted one of Montreal’s best fast food locales by Mirror magazine. Also, try the poutine: some of the city’s finest!
Price: Under $10 for burger, fries, salad and a soft drink.

Chez Cora (1017 Ste-Catherine Est | Tel.: (514) 285-2672)
Montreal’s favourite breakfast joint serves huge portions that will no doubt please. The menu offers dozens of choices for both the health-conscious and for those who eat as if they are heading into the woods.
Price: Specials start at around $5 for a basic two-egg platter and go up to $12 for the lumberjacks.

Schwartz's Delicatessen (3895 St. Laurent | Tel.: (514) 842-4813)
Schwartz’s is a Montreal institution, the home of true Montreal soul food: the smoked meat sandwich. Tourists plan their Montreal vacations around Schwartz’s. Enough said.
Price: It’s hard to pay more than $10 a person.

La Maison VIP (1077 Clark | Tel.: (514) 861-1943)
Located in the heart of China Town (and close to the conference venue), La Maison VIP offers some of Montreal’s best Chinese cuisine. Try the General Tao chicken; you’ll dream of coming back to Montreal just for this dish.
Price: $15-25 per entree (worth every cent)

Café Olimpico (124 St-Viateur Ouest | Tel.: (514) 495-0746)
Serving Montreal’s best coffee for more than 30 years, this café is a must for java aficionados. Situated in Mile-End (one the trendiest neighborhood of Montreal....) it's definitely worth the detour.
Price: Under $5

Rockaberry (4275 rue Saint-Denis | Tel.: (514) 844-9479)
Rockaberry IS dessert heaven. With 30 different pies to choose from and great coffee to boot, how can you go wrong? You can eat these scrumptious desserts on site or take one away with you to enjoy later.
Price: Under $10 for a slice of pie and a coffee

L'Académie (4051 rue Saint-Denis | Tel.: (514) 849-2249)
Once a pricier place, L'Academie has reinvented itself as the place to go for mussels and inexpensive fare. A great apportez-votre-vin (bring your own wine) spot.
Price: Entrees typically run between $15 and $20

Brutopia (1219 rue Crescent | Tel.: (514) 393-9277)
Serving fresh full flavoured beers brewed onsite (try their renowned Raspberry brew), Brutopia is one of Montreal’s premiere brewpubs. The pub is spread across 3 floors with three outdoor terraces. Enjoy a great beer under the starry Montreal sky while listening to the live house band.
Price: Around $5-7 a pint

Sainte-Élisabeth (1412 Sainte Élisabeth | Tel.: (514)286-4302)
With one of the nicest terraces in the city, Sainte-Élisabeth is the place to go during the late spring and summer months. Famous for its Monday and Tuesday specials ($3 and $4 pints of Boreal).
Price: Around $5-7 a pint

Sir Winston Churchill Pub (1455-1459 Crescent | Tel.: (514) 288-3814)
The Sir Winston has become one of Montreal’s largest and best night spots with a huge dance floor, nine bars, and a terrace.
Price: Around $5-7 a pint

Pub St-Paul (124 St-Paul Est | Tel.: (514) 874-0485)
Located in the heart of old Montreal, overlooking the St-Lawrence River, Pub St-Paul's reputation lies in the quality of its menu and its live shows at night.
Price: Around $5-7 a pint

Laika (4040 Saint-Laurent |Tel.: (514) 842-8088)
Located on busy St. Laurent, its windows wide open in the summertime, its DJs spinning lounge-y, funky house, exotic drinks, yummy munchies... this is a place to relax but also to be seen.
Price: Food and drinks under $10

Recent grads/current students: call to participate!

Our colleague Carol Shepstone of Mount Royal College (Calgary) is conducting a study entitled "Perceptions of Leadership: Assumptions, Perspectives and Needs."

From Carol:

The study investigates perceptions of new and existing leadership needs for libraries in Canada, exploring emerging definitions of leadership along generational lines. The specific target population for the study is recent graduates or current MLIS students in Canada, between the ages of 18-30 (inclusive).

If this is you, go forth & participate!

Full details, and a link to the research questionnaire, are at the research blog.

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!

CLA Student Chapter Leaders!

Thanks to the CASLIS Ottawa blog for posting this great introduction to our CLA Student Chapter reps!

Survey on the Engagement of New Library Professionals in Leadership

NLIP IG is pleased to post the following on behalf of Kathleen Delong:

This is your invitation to participate in a web survey on leadership engagement of new library professionals. The survey is directed to new professionals who have worked for five years or less since graduating with a Masters degree in Librarianship (graduated in years 2000 to 2007). The survey data is being collected for purposes of a study carried out in fulfillment of requirements for the PhD Managerial Leadership in the Information Professions program at the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science in Boston, MA.

The short survey (shouldn't take more than 15 minutes) probes various factors associated with leadership engagement of new professionals in Canadian libraries. It is your choice whether or not you wish to participate in the survey, participation is entirely voluntary. You can terminate the survey at any time by closing your browser. There will be no penalty or consequence for doing so.

Responses are anonymous and data will be reported without any identifying characteristics.
This survey has been approved by the Simmons College Institutional Review Board. Although I am professionally affiliated with the University of Alberta, this survey is not related to my work with the University of Alberta Libraries.

If you have any questions or concerns, you can contact me at kathleen.delong @ simmons.edu

To access the survey, click on the link below:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=O0I95Z7fRsAMKcQEky9Bkw_3d_3d

Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk

Good news! Our conference proposal was approved and is on the schedule for the annual CLA conference - this year hosted by the beautiful city of Vancouver. This is what you'll see in the upcoming conference documentation from CLA (due out in January, I believe):

Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk: Reflections on Work from New Librarians and Information Professionals

E-publishing, Web 2.0 and other digital initiatives are changing the landscape of information and the way we do business. Are new information professionals prepared to take on the ever-changing information world? What plans do they have to ensure they connect with the users of this information? What are some of their professional expectations as they embark upon new careers? What challenges and opportunities have they encountered?To address some of these questions (and a whole host of others), this panel session of new librarians and information professionals (1-5 years work experience) who will discuss their career choices and share their most important pieces of advice. This will be followed by an open question period. Panel members are professionals from a variety of industry streams including academic, public, and special libraries.

Moderator: Allison Sivak, University of Alberta
Panel speakers: To be confirmed
Brought to you by The New Librarians and Information Professionals Interest Group and co-sponsored by the following CLA divisions: CAPL, CACUL, CASLIS, and CASL.

Our First Post!

Hey there!
We know what you're thinking "augh another blog to read" but wait this one has so much potential! Your two NLIP-IG Co-chairs are looking to hook you up with news, announcements, relevant discussion topics, and the latest Canadian Library Association info...all designed with you, the new Librarian or Information Professional, in mind! We are looking to post here regularly so check back often.