Shea and I often talk about how strange it is that librarians are one of the few professions where practitioners actively visit local examples of their workplace in other communities when traveling (she doesn’t have a strong desire to visit hospitals in other places when on a holiday – that’s for sure!). I think there’s […]
Through my work with the Writers Guild of Alberta, I became involved with the Calgary Freedom to Read Week Committee. I can’t find it online now but my memory is that this committee of writers, librarians, publishers and social activists was formed after some MLA held up some book in the Alberta Legislature to denounce […]
I saw this in the context of someone dealing with cancer but I can think of lots of other situations – workplaces, volunteer organizations, schools, families, life during Covid in general – where everyone is encouraged to act as if everything is good and positive and happy instead of acknowledging that things might be less […]
When I was in high school and later, in university, the neighbours across the street hosted a Boxing Day road hockey tournament every year. This was followed by an airing of the latest Don Cherry “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em” VHS tape that one of their two boys got from Christmas, finger foods, basement beers and […]
Going through some old papers, I came across this recommendation letter from the Sask Library Association Executive Director. If this letter didn’t make it clear, I’ve always felt a strong connection to libraries, loved getting to work for the province’s library association and, only five short years later, I’d be off to library school to […]
There was a good Twitter thread recently which posed a simple question: “What’s your controversial library opinion?” I thought it might be interesting to record some of my responses to these opinions whether I agreed or disagree (if this isn’t clear, all the bolded opinions below were submitted by Twitbrarians and the plain text under […]
Now that we’ve been going out more for shopping, staying in our seasonal campsite since the start of June, I’ve been back to work for over a month, and we’ve even been brave enough to eat at a couple restaurants (only patios though, not inside!), I thought it might be interesting to think about who’s […]
This was the sign one of my staff hastily wrote during the frantic last day my library was open to the public (which ironically, I suspect was one of the busiest circulation days in my branch’s history as people took *armloads* of books – perhaps realising our project of “at least a couple weeks” was […]
Plexiglass? Check. Signage Promoting Safety and New Rules? Check. Visible people counter? Check. Stanchions? Check. Revamped shelving and computer areas? Check. Ready to reopen? Ready as we’ll ever be! 🙂
