Ballad in Plain E

After many months of hard work, the results of LTAIG’s 2007 Salary Survey are in, and can be viewed at the LTAIG website. Court (who was the Survey Coordinator) and Rob have both already weighed in on the subject. Thanks to all who completed the survey, and big thanks to my fellow LTAIG Committee members who worked on getting the survey written, results collected and analysed, and loaded onto the website. (An aside: if you haven’t been the the LTAIG website lately, check it out. Rob has done a spectacular job of the revamp.)

One of the most interesting areas of feedback for me is the general comments section. We depend on this section to tweak questions for the next survey, and to get a sense of what else is on library techs’ minds. For instance, we added a question about unions to the 2007 survey in response to comments in the 2005 survey.

Some excerpts of comments to the 2007 survey:

• “…It would be interesting to know if library technicians are interested in updating and reviewing their knowledge by participating in workshops provided by themselves, college instructors, or other library professionals.”
• “It might be useful to ask about union or non-union status as it relates to wages…”
• “I’d like to know if LT in libraries must have a performance review every year…”
• “…if people are already working in a library and do not have a degree or diploma, are they in the process of getting one, or are they planning/considering getting one? Why? Why not?…”
• “I’d be interested to find out how many librarian positions are being replaced with clerical staff or library technicians. I suspect this is high and will continue to increase as librarians become obsolete. This trend will provide great opportunities for library technicians!”

All good ideas. The last comment will, I’m sure, strike fear in the hearts of the (anonymous) Concerned Librarians of BC.

Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette does it again!

…thanks to Steve’s fabulous LegalPubs.ca feed, I was just alerted of the announcement on the LexisNexis site describing the new enhancement to Quicklaw: a statute citator.

I have always found that the content of WestlaweCarswell and QL’s case citators differ quite a bit, and often one will have one or more cases that the other doesn’t. So it’s nice that now we can have another place to look for cases judicially considered - though nothing beats a ‘manual’ note-up, when you want to be really sure. Shaunna Mireau has created some excellent guides on how to conduct an exhaustive search.

Woo hoo! My favourite time of the year - conference planning begins!

I whipped up a map of all the conference hotel locations in relation to the convention centre, and that made it quite easy to select the one with that would work for me.

With the conference being so close to Vancouver this year, I think more of my lib tech colleagues will be attending. Should be a blast!