An article in yesterday’s Cape Breton Post says that the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board has hired three library technicians for new positions in elementary schools within the board’s jurisdiction. Previously, only high schools were assigned library techs.
There are some new features in two of my favourite “people” tools.
I’m a little late on this one, but in January, LinkedIn debuted its “Answers” feature (I think you have to be signed in to see this section) . Don’t start mucking around with this unless you’ve got some time to kill. Nearing Wikipedian levels of time-suckage…it’s like pearl citation technique gone delightfully awry, in the best possible way. There are so many interesting questions posted, for example: “What’s the best question you’ve ever asked or been asked that helped you get to know someone better?” and “What’s the worst thing you ever heard on a job interview?” You can also subscribe to an RSS feed of a particular category (for instance,”Law and Legal” or “Career Development“), which always scores points with me.
And Zoominfo, which has long been one of my favourite websites for looking up biographical information, has a new feature called “BeFound”, which allows you to take control of your Zoominfo profile, consolidate summaries, and add information (such as whether you are male or female), if you wish. Nifty! I’m not a man anymore!
I’m thrilled to see the BC Courthouse Library A-Z Knowledgebase is up and running. I got a sneak peek of it as a tester, and now it’s available to the public. It’s been really helpful already: the first day it was up and running, I used it to find some helpful info on the review of lawyers’ bills. Way to go, BCCLS!
The March issue of LTAIG News is now available from the LTAIG website. This issue is, IMHO, fabulous. We’ve got three “meet an LTAIGer” profiles, an overview of LTAIG’s participation in the upcoming BC Library Conference, an interview with Erica Smith, the president of the brand-new Nova Scotia Association of Library Technicians, preliminary results from the recently completed 2007 LTAIG Salary Survey, an excellent Blog Watch column, and lots of other great stuff. Check it out!
Rob provided a good overview of what’s happening with the Legislative Library closure over in Victoria. VALL has just released an update, with details on what we know, what we don’t know, and what we can do. And a “Save the BC Legislative Library” blog has been created, and seems to be posting news articles and letters to the editor as they roll in.
There’s a great quote from the story that ran in the Vancouver Sun on Saturday:
“It’s a tragedy,” said veteran Times Colonist columnist Jim Hume, who has used the library for more than 50 years. “My God, if the legislative chamber is the heart of the legislature, the library is its soul . . . . This is our history. If you really want to do research, you use the library where you can find everything, not the Internet.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I plan on writing to the Premier, the Leader of the Opposition, my MLA, and the Speaker, and I encourage you to do the same.
Fridays are generally awesome, and made ever better because Friday is “La Fashionista” (Style File) day on Precedent: The New Rules of Law and Style, which, if I haven’t said before, is one my favourite law-related sites.
P to the S: real content coming soon!
LTAIG’s bi-annual salary survey is up and running over at Survey Monkey. If you are a library support staff worker in BC or Canada, we want you to hear from you!
The survey will be open for another few days, until March 11, and the results will be made available around the time of the BCLA conference in April.
Results of the 2005 survey are available here.
