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In this lightning talk, Brenda and Dhara will discuss their collaborative efforts to get the Afrocentric Library Collection off the ground at Toronto East Detention Center (TEDC). The Afrocentric Library Collection is part of a much larger program created by Dhara to highlight the distinct needs of the institution's predominantly Black inmate population. This collection fills in the gaps that the general collection has had for years and has increased access to materials by Black authors for our inmates. Brenda and Dhara will discuss how the library has supported the collection, as well as other advantages and the difficulties of having such a collection within a maximum security institution.

Project Eevee - Academic Community During COVID-19
Project Eevee is a study conducted by three second year Library Information Technology students. It was undertaken to discover and document the strategies and coping mechanisms of students and instructors in a post secondary learning environment who had to suddenly pivot from in-person to online course delivery because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers parsed through data gathered from focus group discussions and organized that data through thematic analysis. This presentation provides an overview of the researchers' reported findings.
Eleanor Golding (She/They) - Rocky View Schools, Erik Lofthouse (He/Him) - Rocky view Schools, & Joanne McKenzie Hicks (She/Her) - ARC Resources Ltd.
Eleanor Golding fell in love with libraries while attending the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, studying English literature and anthropology. After finishing their undergraduate degree, they went on to complete their diploma in Library and Information Technology from SAIT. They are now spending their weeks as the Learning Commons Facilitator at Chestermere High School with Rockyview Schools, and spending their weekends with family and their little cat, Phryne.
Erik Lofthouse graduated in April 2021 from the Library Information Technology program at SAIT. He is currently working as a Learning Commons Facilitator for Rocky View Schools, splitting his time between Fireside School and Elbow Valley Elementary. He has a passion for children's literacy and young adult literature. In his free time Erik enjoys video games, reading about history, and playing with his two dogs, Juno and Sadie.
A recent graduate of SAIT’s Library Information Technology program, Joanne McKenzie Hicks discovered her favourite part of returning to school was the connections she made with her classmates and instructors. When the opportunity arose to study student community during COVID-19, and receive a full course credit in the deal, Joanne did not hesitate to sign-on.
Joanne began work shortly after graduation in the field of information governance and is thoroughly enjoying the launch of her new career.
When she is not at work, Joanne enjoys writing for her citation blog, reading, gardening, and taking road trips with her family.

Join urban agriculturalist and horticulture therapy practitioner, Nicola Gunter from Good Worm Garden Programs, as we learn more about the evidence-based "power of plants". Nicola will discuss how to bring nature indoors into your office setting and why this is beneficial. No green thumb needed!

On April 20th 2021, YAACS hosted our first Virtual Youth Services insitute.

Keynote Speakers: 
Slides and other resources related to the Keynote can be found in the Materials section.
J. Elizabeth Mills, co-author of Create, Innovate, and Serve: A Radical Approach to Children’s and Youth Programming and Supercharged Storytimes: An Early Literacy Planning and Assessment Guide.
Dr. Michelle H. Martin,  Beverly Cleary Endowed Professor for Children and Youth Services in the Information School at the University of Washington

Ask Me Anything (AMA) Human Library Volunteers:
You can find some notes for the AMA sessions in the Materials section.
Christopher Knapp - PGPL - I am an avid gamer who has advocated greatly for the importance of video gaming in the library.
Tess Prendergast - UBC - I have a lot of experience creating inclusive storytimes.
Stephanie  - SRC - I am interested in Among Us programs for teens.
Nariel Davis - VIRL - I do story walks in partnership with local businesses.
Kaley Young - NVDPL - I do a Nature Challenge program.
Vicki Donoghue - BPL - I have been working with community partners during COVID
Julia McKnight - VPL - I am supporting staff mixing virtual and in-person teen summer programs.
Kate Wood - GVPL - I am a Library Assistant in my system.  I am also a qualified Librarian.
Sarah Bagshawe - VPL -  I am a Reader's Advisory unicorn.

Schedule:
Here is the schedule for the day:
9:00 – 9:30 a.m.              Welcome and Icebreaker
9:30 – 11:00 a.m.            Knowledge, Artistry, and Reflection: Designing Thoughtful Programming for Children presented by J. Elizabeth Mills and Dr. Michelle H. Martin
11:00-11:15 a.m.             BREAK
11:15-11:50 a.m.             Breakout Rooms (human library meets AMA – ask me anything)
11:55-12:30 p.m.            Breakout Rooms (AEA – ask everybody everything!)             
12:30-1:00 p.m.              Reflection activity

VIU Library Special Collections has started working closely with Milner Gardens & Woodland – a property with 60 acres of woodland and 10 acres of garden surrounding a heritage house in Qualicum Beach – in order to piece together and preserve the Veronica & Ray Milner Collection. With the help of a handful of people who knew the Milners personally, we are working together to collect and preserve the history of the land, property, and owners (ca.1930s-1998) so that it can be shared and made more accessible for the 200+ volunteers who work at the Gardens, as well as visitors and researchers further afield.

Collaboration can be transformative and a key to future success, particularly for smaller libraries/memory organisations. Through collaboration and large-scale systemic design, Arca, BC's collaborative digital repository, creates equity across the province by putting an innovative discovery platform within reach for even the smallest organisations. Attendees of this panel session learnt about the transformative impact of Arca from BC GLAM sector participants who are using Arca to make their digital treasures searchable and accessible to their communities. They heard about the innovative collaboration models for Arca partnerships with the BC History Digitization Program and the Digitized Okanagan History Project.

In this session, accessibility experts working in post-secondary education support organizations will describe simple ways you can be more intentional in designing a library and collections that all of your users can access and use.

Stress is becoming a norm and can lead to serious health issues. Library workers are overwhelmed. What role should the library play in ensuring employee wellness? One in five people struggle and mental health is a leading cause of workplace disability in Canada. As a champion for mental health, in 2014 Pickering Public Library (PPL) became early adopters of the voluntary National Standard for Workplace Psychological Health & Safety CSA-Z1003-13. PPL will share their best practices to implement a psychological health and safety system for employees in your library. This session will also share the results of a recent national research case study in which PPL was a participant organization. This session will be of interest to any library employee, especially library leaders, joint health & safety committee members, and staff with human resources or supervisory responsibilities. There will be an audience question period near the end of the session for added interactivity.
Learning objectives:

At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Share experiences as it relates to mental health in the workplace.

2. Examine and obtain a tool kit of practical resources that can be utilized to help their library implement a psychologically healthy and safe workplace.

3. Identify and develop strategies that are suited to their individual workplaces.

Speaker: Tanya Sinclair, Pickering Public Library

Biography:

Tanya Sinclair is the CEO at Pickering Public Library. She has over a decade of experience working in libraries, combined with 20 years in the Human Resources field. Tanya is passionate about learning and is always looking for news ways to engage staff. Tanya’s leadership philosophy is: Lead, Learn, Laugh! Tanya collaborated with the Mental Health Commission of Canada for three years positioning Pickering Public Library as an early adopter of the National Standard for Workplace Psychological Health & Safety. Tanya recently served as a workplace mental health guest panelist for the Conference Board of Canada in 2018.