Head Tale

(Ottawa, April 24, 2007) – The Canadian Library Association (CLA) is
pleased to announce Melissa Poremba as winner of the Canadian Library
Association’s 24th Student Article Contest for “Resources You can Count
on @ Your Library”.



Melissa is a distance education student in
the Library and Information Technician Program at Mohawk College. The
idea for Melissa's entry was based on a paper she wrote in 2006 while
studying for her additional qualification in school librarianship at
the Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. Melissa has a
BA in both Arts and Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, and a
B. Ed. from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at
University of Toronto. She has specialist qualifications to teach
Economics and Mathematics at the Intermediate/Senior divisions in
Ontario schools. Melissa has an interest in numeracy education, and her
submission discusses how library resources can be used for numeracy
education.



The Advisory Committee thought that her entry was
original, engaging, well-written, imaginative, readable and had broad
appeal in addition to being a timely topic. One committee member wrote
that “. . . it should inspire all librarians to rethink the potential
of their collections.”



Melissa will be awarded a cash prize as
well as free registration, accommodation and transportation to the
CLA/APLA/NLLA 2007 National Conference and Tradeshow in St. John’s,
Newfoundland, May 23-26, 2007.



The first runner-up is Jason
Hammond for “You Must Have a Lot of Young Readers in Your Family: The
Experiences of Lone Male Patrons in Children's Libraries”. Jason
graduated in December 2006 from the MLIS program at University of
Western Ontario. The Committee members liked that this entry was
personal and experienced-based as well as being interesting, timely and
original. A number of the committee members mentioned that the topic
was eye-opening. Jason will receive a cash prize courtesy of the Wosk
Family and a choice of CLA publications.



The second runner-up is
Kendra Bender for “Library Services for Newcomers to Canada: Embracing
Cultural Diversity”. Kendra is a student in the MLIS program at the
School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta.
Comments on this entry were that it incorporates both personal
experience and a professional research approach, it was well-written,
timely and focuses on Canada. Kendra will also receive a cash prize
courtesy of the Wosk Family and a choice of CLA publications.



“This
year, there were many excellent and unique entries for the Student
Article Contest which made the judging enjoyable, but also very
difficult”, shared Mary-Lu Brennan, Convenor of the Member
Communications Advisory Committee. As one committee member responded –
“Wow! This was a tough exercise – all were well-written, the topics
were interesting and in some cases quite thought-provoking.”



The
prizes are awarded courtesy of CLA, Micromedia ProQuest, Coutts
Information Services and the Wosk Family Bursary. Entries are judges by
CLA’s Member Communication Advisory Committee which is comprised of librarians and information professionals.

(via Cabot Y.'s Facebook page)

An early draft of the paper I submitted is on my blog. 
It was revised a bit for submission to the contest – mostly tightening
it up and re-wording some parts.  But the gist of the thing is still in
the original I uploaded if you're interested.  Also, a very public
thanks to John M, Bruce F and Michael T
as well as a few anonymous male classmates who gave me the great
feedback which helped make my paper into something much better than I
could've written without their help. 

It's funny too that I start the blog post where I uploaded my essay by
talking about Cantilever which was an idea David, Sabina, Linda and I
had to start an open-source student writing journal/repository.  The
idea never came to fruition which is too bad – I often felt like I
learned as much reading my classmates' work as reading the source
articles from the pros! 

Other publishing-type news – just got official word last night that after a lengthy revision process, my essay on Alberta user fees (now bearing the much more academic title:  “Cash Cow: User Fees in Alberta Libraries”) has been accepted for publication by Partnership: The Online  Journal That Has A Really Long Name I Can Never Remember. 

After I got my first suggested revisions back from them, I did a blog
post suggesting that everybody should go through a peer-review process
like this at least once.   I'd stand by that suggestion.  Professors are often short for time and
although many give good feedback and suggestions, few have the time to
deeply analyse your paper the way the journal's anonymous reviewers
do. 

It's super-easy to submit – pick one of your best/favourite essay and
follow the submissions instructions online.  Make sure you do have some
time to do revisions though  because you likely will be asked to do so
(I went through three major revisions of my paper before it was
accepted.) 

But it's now a completely different and much much better paper than the original version that's also posted on my web site (I'm running out of “favourite” paper to do stuff with – I might have to start writing some more on my own! )

I'll post a link to the paper when it's published on the Partnership
web site so you can compare the original X-titled version with the new
PG-titled version.