Staff Development

Presentation delivered at the Alberta Library Conference 2018 in Jasper, AB.
Communities all over Alberta are seeing an increase in self-represented litigants due to the recession and the high cost of legal representation. This means that more people are coming to libraries to access information about the law and their legal rights. Like libraries, public legal education organizations like CPLEA work to provide the public with reliable sources of information. Searching for legal information tends to be very reaction-driven (i.e. my landlord is evicting me; my partner and I are separating, etc.). By standing together, we can empower Albertans to know and assert their rights before a legal dispute arises. For more information about the Centre for Public Legal Education Alberta (CPLEA) or to access free legal information resources, visit www.cplea.ca.

F08 - Connecting With Multicultural Communities: Intercultural Communication Workshop
Fri Apr 21 2017, 10:30am–11:45am, Cordova Ballroom

SESSION DESCRIPTION

BCLA's Diversity and Multicultural Services Committee conducted an online survey in April 2016 to identify challenges faced by libraries when serving multicultural communities. The survey received 77 responses from libraries in BC: 71% indicated that their biggest challenge was a lack of familiarity with multicultural communities and their needs, while 81% of the libraries indicated that intercultural training would help them better serve ethnically diverse communities.
This workshop will be a first step in addressing these challenges through exercises, problem-solving, and interactive discussion of real-life library scenarios submitted by library staff.

SPEAKERS

Ravi Basi, Surrey Libraries

Biography: Ravi Basi is Manager of Multicultural Services at Surrey Libraries. For the past 25 years she has provided outreach, programs, and workshops to newcomers, immigrants, and refugees in Surrey, BC, one of Canada's most ethnically diverse cities, as well as formed strategic liasions with community stakeholders such as immigrant settlement agencies and the City of Surrey's diversity departments. Ravi has also been involved with ongoing anti-racism programs and initiatives. 

Ravi's work with multicultural communities is fuelled by her own family's experience as immigrants, as well as the conviction that immigrants enrich our communities and are vital to Canada's success on the world stage, and that libraries can play a crucial role in their transition and success.

Fereshteh Kashefi, BSC, MLS, North Vancouver City Library

Biography: Fereshteh Kashefi is Multicultural Services Librarian at North Vancouver City Library where her passion for all things multicultural is focussed on building multilingual collections and improving library services to immigrant communities. 

Prior to moving to Canada, Fereshteh was Head of National Bibliography at the National Library of Iran and also taught Cataloguing and Classification at the University of Tehran.

Thu Apr 20 2017, 11:00am–12:15pm, Tuscany Room
 
SESSION DESCRIPTION
Generously Sponsored By: Vancouver Public Library
 
From common stumbling blocks experienced by library patrons to broader challenges facing libraries in the 21st century, this hands-on session provides a practical introduction to service design methodology that can be used to improve the quality of library services and prepare libraries for new services that might lie ahead.
 
Service design is an emerging discipline that combines user research, business strategy, and design practice to innovate the way services are traditionally conceived of and implemented. This methodology is based around interactions with users, touchpoints, service personnel, and stakeholders. It uses design thinking as an approach and follows a structured and organized process.
 
Drawing from our user experience and design expertise, we will highlight case studies of service design and user-centred design in practice with examples from the Vancouver Public Library and in other nontraditional design environments. We introduce participants to processes and strategies that can be used to identify or frame problems, test potential solutions, and implement evidence-based outcomes in their own libraries and communities.
 
Participants will be encouraged to bring their own experiences to the table as they engage in a collaborative design exercise that challenges them to apply these strategies to a real-life service problem in a library setting. Attendees will walk away from this session with a stronger understanding of how service-led approaches that put library users front and centre can powerfully impact the way libraries operate and adapt to change.
 
 
SPEAKERS
Mary B Castellanes, B.Des, Vancouver Public Library Biography: Mary Castellanes is a Web Graphics Designer at Vancouver Public Library with formal training in communication design, who has grown up with libraries very much a part of her life. She is interested in the open nature of web technologies, and the thoughtful application of design in our everyday lives. As a member of the Digital Services Web Team, Mary has been involved in the redesign of VPL.ca. The firsthand observations and feedback gathered from consultation and testing sessions with the public helped inform many of the visual design decisions for the new website.
 
Jessica Whu, MLIS, Vancouver Public Library Biography: Jessica Whu is a Web Librarian at Vancouver Public Library. Most recently, with her work on VPL’s website redesign project, she’s worked with staff across departments to assess and design web content that supports effective service delivery. Jessica loves how her work in information design, web development, and user experience intersect with her passion for people, communities, and user-centred services.

Within the context of the latest trends and research, this informative session will include engaging group conversations guaranteed to “shake up” perceptions of wellness and mental health in the workplace.
Learning Objectives:

• Increased awareness of mental health issues today/how they impact
• Performance/morale
• Increased knowledge of how to develop & contribute to solution focused strategies to improve workplace wellness 

Join us for a remarkably fun and instructive design exercise that encourages teams to experience simple but profound lessons in collaboration, innovation and creativity. Using a unique set of tools (including spaghetti and marshmallows) this hands-on, interactive session will focus on team-building and will demonstrate how to improve a team’s capacity to generate ideas and build rapport.
Learning Objectives:

• Get delegates into a creative frame of mind
• Encourage delegates to think about what it takes to dramatically increase innovation
• Foster a sense of team-work among delegates