Strength in Numbers: Sharing the Stories of Public Library Workers’ Emotional Labour

Description

What happens when, despite providing professional and respectful customer service, you are yelled at, threatened, or challenged? When the encounter is done, how do you manage your raw emotions from the event? What supports exist to help you work through these feelings, and start to love your job (and the customers) again? This session will present the findings from a Canadian study that investigated emotional labour in public libraries. Emotional labour is the idea that, working in public service, there is a need to control your emotions in order to accomplish your job. This research illustrated the ways in which public library workers have to respond to intense customer service situations. You will hear stories from the frontlines of customer service and learn about some of the strategies public library workers use to deal with the effects of emotionally charged customer encounters.

 

Author

Dr. Norene Erickson and Dr. Joanne Rodger
Conference

Conference Year

2020
Materials
Presentation Audience
Presentation Format

A Case Study of the Impact of Reading on Young Adult Social Justice Actions

Description

In recent years, young adult (YA) fiction has, like its Generation Z audience, turned to social justice issues and activism. At the same time, the discussion of social responsibility in librarianship has begun to include human rights and social justice, especially since public libraries provide education and information about issues of rights and justice. 

 

For Jennifer's thesis research, she conducted a participatory case study with a co-designed virtual program through the Camrose Public Library. The case study investigated how teen readers engage with the social justice themes in YA fiction, how and if they find these themes useful for understanding and engaging in activism on their own, and the influence of public library programming on these actions. 

 

This presentation provides an overview of what worked and what didn’t when it came to collaborative program design with teens and provides practical recommendations for young adult librarians who want to implement social justice programming.

Author

Jennifer McDevitt (she/her)

Author E-Mail

mcdevitt@ualberta.ca
Conference

Conference Year

2021
Materials
Presentation Format

Trans-Inclusive Hiring Practices

Description

CW: Discussions of Transphobia, Homophobia, Hate Speech, Suicide, Violence

 

As LBTQA+ identities become more widely acknowledged and accepted, it is critical that libraries ensure that their hiring processes are kept up to date and as inclusive as possible. This presentation is designed to assist potential hiring committees in developing best practices to ensure that these identities are not only respected, but that their presence does not negatively prejudice the committee against the potential recruit. It will primarily address transgender identities, but is broadly applicable to many others in the LBTQA+ community. By the conclusion of the presentation, you will have a versatile toolkit to ensure your library’s positions are truly open to all who apply.

Author

Samantha Allen (She/her)

Author E-Mail

sallan@ualberta.ca
Conference

Conference Year

2021
Materials
Presentation Audience
Presentation Format

History of Copyright

Author

University of Alberta

Description

 Learning Objectives

  • Recall key events in the history of copyright 
  • Understand how copyright has evolved, in particular from a means of encouraging learning to an economic policy
  • Understand how copyright’s history is shaped by the interplay of domestic and international factors
Resource Topic
Resource Audience

Resource Type (defunct)

Web Resource

Applying Fair Dealing

Author

University of Alberta

Description

Learning Objectives

  1. Recognize that satisfying a fair dealing purpose fulfills only the first step of the two-step fair dealing test
  2. Understand the six factors and their relationship to one another in the second part of the two-step fair dealing test, and
  3. Apply both steps of the two-step fair dealing test to conduct a fair dealing analysis
Resource Topic
Resource Audience

Resource Type (defunct)

Web Resource

In Your Feelings: Let's Talk About Emotional Labour in Public Libraries

Description

In the fall of 2018, Kyla conducted a pilot study at the University of Alberta School of Library and Information Studies to learn more about how emotional labour manifests in public library workers’ interactions with difficult patrons. This session will begin with a brief history of the research on emotional labour, and then go over the pilot study and its findings. Through the stories of the anonymous public library workers we can better understand the emotional labour demands of public library work. Ultimately, emotional labour will never disappear from library work, but together we can find a way to recognize its existence and value.
Learning Objectives:

  • Understand what emotional labour is.
  • Discover how emotional labour manifests in frontline public library workers’ interactions with difficult patrons.
  • Learn how organizational issues play a role in emotional labour.

Author

Kyla Lee

Conference Year

2019
Materials

Presentation File

Find a Way to Develop Data Literacy - Using Library Carpentry!

Description

This preconference session will help participants find a way to develop staff’s data literacy by leveraging Library Carpentry training (https://librarycarpentry.org/). Library Carpentry’s goal is to create a community of learners who embrace technologies & software to get work done more effectively. This session will begin with an explanation of Library Carpentry & how the presenters have applied it at the University of Alberta Libraries. Participants will then learn tangible & scalable ways they can use Library Carpentries at their libraries to break down barriers for library staff’s professional development around coding & data analysis. Following these discussions, participants will take part in a hands-on Intro to Data workshop demo (https://tinyurl.com/yasz3n2n), highlighting pedagogical techniques that help demystify key-tech concepts & support learners at all levels.

Author

Abigail Sparling, Céline Gareau-Brennan

Author E-Mail

abigail.sparling@ualberta.ca, crg@ualberta.ca

Conference Year

2019
Materials
Presentation Format
PDF

Never Call a Meeting a Pow Wow: And Other Steps for Creating a Successful Indigenous Event

Description

This panel shared the presenters’ experiences in attending, planning, and executing Indigenous events. By sharing this knowledge, it is hoped that participants will leave with an understanding of some fundamental steps in planning Indigenous inspired events. More specifically, the following questions will be tackled: What role does the Indigenous community play in the planning of events? What is the role of an Indigenous Elder? What does cultural protocol look like?

Author

Tanya Ball, Anne Carr-Wiggin, Sharon Farnel, Gabrielle Lamontagne, Kayla Lar-Son, Sheila Laroque

Author E-Mail

laroque@ualberta.ca

Conference Year

2018
Materials

Data of Unusual Size: A Policy Framework Investigation

Description

Over the last several years, many academic libraries have engaged in institution-wide outreach efforts promoting the value of research data management and the importance of data archiving and sharing. A happy result of this work is that PIs leading research projects that are concluding are now bringing data archiving requests for well-managed research data directly to libraries. But much of this data has the potential to consume hundreds of terabytes of storage space – some from individual projects alone. These storage-hungry datasets require development in software, hardware, policy, and service so that these large digital treasures can be archived according to academic library commitments to strong data stewardship. We conducted an environmental review of select mature large-filesize data archiving services to identify services offered to research. We will share practices and policies for data archiving and an overview of the more challenging large data archiving scenarios facing academic libraries.

Author

Leah Vanderjagt & Laura Gerlitz
Conference

Conference Year

2017
Materials
Presentation Topic