Information Literacy

Is your library full of older patrons who struggle to use a computer or send a text message? This presentation will outline how increased digital literacy can have a positive social impact in your community. When your senior patrons are comfortable using, understanding, and creating digital content, they become active digital citizens – able to reliable interact with the world through the use of technology. As we debunk the myth that seniors are unwilling and unable to learn about technology, we will explore the many ways to incorporate technology and digital literacy into library programming. From one-on-one support to intergenerational learning and passive programming, digital literacy learning can be supported in a variety of ways in libraries. Learn the dos and don’ts of teaching tech to seniors and discuss solutions to common issues, such as varying literacy levels, a lack of familiarity, and losing your patience!

Science Literacy Week is a national week-long celebration of science, which ran from September 19 to 25, 2016. University of Alberta Libraries, Airdrie Public Library, University of Lethbridge Library, and Medicine Hat Public Library organized presentations, speakers, and demos to connect users to scientific research, concepts, and technology. This session will examine differing perspectives and approaches in planning and hosting outreach events.
Learning objectives:

• Successful coordination and implementation of Science Literacy Week events
• Targeting specialized presenters/groups for participation
• Cultivating community relationships
• Engaging local community attendance at event

Presentation on how to host a CryptoParty. CryptoParty's are "a global and decentralized grass-roots movement to help everyday people learn how to improve their internet security with open source tools."

This presentaion includes:

• Sharing Early Learning Pedagogy & Connecting Public Library Program Practices
• Creating Invitations for Learning
• Professional Learning Opportunities

Wikipedia is viewed 8000 times each second. The 8th largest referrer to DOIs, Wikipedia has become a ubiquitous starting point for discovery; many students, members of the general public, even professionals like medical doctors use it in their information seeking. Because of this, professionals from libraries, universities, archives, and publishing increasingly recognize Wikipedia's importance as a way to reach where readers already are--on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia Library is an initiative founded in 2012 to facilitate access to research sources for Wikipedia editors. It has since expanded into reference services, research literacy instruction, and outreach to cultural institutions. This session will explore some of these initiatives and how librarians, archivists, and educators can get involved.

n 2012, the H.T. Coutts Library, University of Alberta, began digitizing the historical Alberta textbook collection. Collaboration between library units and external partners on this project will ensure online accessibility to this collection. In this session we will review the project milestones, lessons learned and strategies for developing a successful large scale digitization project.
Learning Objectives:

• Strategies for preparing a collection for digitization
• Successful collaboration with project partners Project management techniques
• The rich historical collection of the Alberta K-12 Curriculum

Presentation arguing for the empirically demonstrable demand for libraries to get stuck into the privacy wars and start provisioning "privacy infrastructure" like TOR and VPNs for patrons.

This survey was distributed through local settlement agencies in the Metrotown area of Burnaby, BC in the fall of 2015. 439 surveys were returned. The attached documents are the survey itself, the methodology, and a presentation that has been given in varying forms to the Metrotown Interagency group, the Immigrant Advisory Group of the Burnaby Intercultural Planning Table, and the BC Library Conference in May 2016.  The project was undertaken as a professional experience project by David McAtackney while he was a student at the iSchool at the the University of British Columbia under the supervison of Deb Thomas, Deputy Chief Librarian of Burnaby Public Library.

This session will present the findings taken from a public library “big data” set of user queries posed to the Edmonton Public Library during the summer months from June 21-September 21, 2014. Some of the questions this “big data” set can answer include determining variation in the number of library catalogue searches by day of the week, users’ preferred formats of materials, the long tail of library collections, and the topics of materials being searched for by Edmonton Public Library users. Implications for studying user behavior using big datasets are discussed along with areas for future research.
Learning Objectives:

• What materials users are searching for
• Kinds of questions large datasets can answer
• Data analytics