I read with interest a recent letter published in Science (4 April 2014) where young scientists were asked to send their ideas about what they would do in support of Science Advocacy.  A host of answers was shared, most revolving around children and young adults. Ideas included volunteering at high schools to provide presentations, using social media to blog or post about science, writing informative articles, becoming a science mentor and my personal favorite – becoming a magician in order to fascinate children and teach them about science.

While I found this NextGenVoices survey to be a great way to generate ideas and share suggestions, I started to think how librarians, informationists, or information professionals could also partner with our researchers as science advocates – we could help research and locate science literature geared to specific age levels, we could retweet our researchers’ blog posts, we could establish current awareness alerts to support our researchers’ writing attention-grabbing articles for high school students, and perhaps we could even locate magician’s tricks worth sharing!

What a perfect collaboration — and for an excellent cause!

Donna Gibson
Director of Library Services

I have been thinking a great deal about our Library website.  While we didn’t have an official celebration to mark the site’s first year anniversary, this doesn’t distract from the impact the new site has had and continues to have, on our user community.

Let’s journey back to December 2012 for a moment when a “sneak peek” announcement was posted on our blog. Our goal at that time was to deliver an aesthetically pleasing and easier to navigate site.  We understood from our user community that a transition period would be important so our marketing plan included running both sites for a fixed period of time, providing opportunities for our users to trial the new site and ask us questions concerning the new layout and search functionality.  This also proved to be a good opportunity to receive additional feedback. On Thursday, Jan 31, 2013, we transitioned to the new site and we have not looked back since.  Continue reading →

Weather-wise, it will be good to say good-bye to February.  However the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics has certainly, for me, been a wonderful distraction. Starting with the opening ceremonies, a three-hour event which highlighted Russian culture as seen through the eyes of a young girl, followed by the 3,000 or so athletes who marched into the arena behind their team mate bearing their country’s flag. Whether you were impressed with the dancing bobsledders from Jamaica, the smiling faces of the Canadians, or shorts-wearing athletes from Bermuda (wouldn’t be my choice of outerwear but I do get the connection), you definitely felt the excitement streaming through the TV. Continue reading →