Ballad in Plain E

Erica Smith, president of the newly-formed Nova Scotia Library Technicians Association, is the winner of the 2007 Canadian Library Association - Library Technician Interest Group Award of Merit. You can read the CLA announcement here.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Erica for the March 2007 issue of LTAIG News. She struck me as friendly, enthusiastic, and ambitious - and it is wonderful to see her accomplishments being recognised at the national level. Congratulations, Erica…I hope to shake your hand someday!

Last year’s winner was Diane Walker, past chair of LTAIG.

What an amazing bunch of people we have in our library tech community!

Rob Golbeck is the winner of the 2007 BCLA President’s Award. Rob is the first library technician to be given this honour.

I first met Rob in 2004 when he joined the LTAIG committee to work on the annotated library technician program listings for the LTAIG website. When he became chair of the committee in 2006, he had big shoes to fill: Diane Walker, our past chair, had been an extremely admirable leader. Fortunately, Rob rose to the challenge and has provided excellent leadership and vision ever since.

Rob is a hard worker with plenty of enthusiasm and drive, and a great sense of humour. His dedication to LTAIG is one of the main reasons we have accomplished so much this past year. Not only does he lead our committee, he also maintains the LTAIG website, which receives thousands of hits every year, thanks in great part to his commitment to keeping it up to date and stocked with good content.

I am fortunate to also know Rob through the law library community, where we are both members of the Vancouver Association of Law Libraries. I feel lucky that he and his lovely fiancee (and fellow library technician) Jen are friends of mine outside the library world as well! They are now BC’s official library power-couple!

I join my fellow bloggers in congratulating Rob — way to go!

According to an article in the March 29 edition of the Williams Lake Tribune, a tiny school in Tatla Lake, BC has won the 2007 “BC Schools for Excellence” literacy award. The school was recognized for having the best literacy program in the province.

You can check out the story, which outlines the school’s many literacy initiative, via Canadian Newsstand on Proquest (available on VPL’s electronic resources) and this news release from the government of BC.

Leslie Lamb, a teacher at Tatla Lake Elementary/Junior Secondary, had positive words about the school’s library technician:

“Both Lamb and parent advisory council president Julie McMann also praised the work of library technician Cyndy Abbott.

“She is very skilled and knowledgeable and makes some exquisite choices in books,” Lamb says.

Because of Abbott’s choices she says their library is impressive even though their book budget is small.”

In a perfect world, all schools would have a teacher-librarian in the library. But library technicians and assistants are proving they can do an outstanding job at promoting and developing literacy,too.

Congratulations, Cyndy!

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.

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!

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.

OK, this is shameless self-promotion, but I think it’s kind of cool. Our firm is running a campaign called “Fresh Thinking” and recently, our department was featured in an ad. It appeared a couple weeks ago in the Vancouver Sun, so we are minor celebrities! At least in our mothers’ eyes ;)

At first I was a little reluctant to be photographed for and named in an ad that would be published in a major paper, but now I think it’s alright — how often do you see a little old library tech in something like that? Behold the mighty and modest Research & Reference team!

Wildly overdue but here at last: the latest issue of LTAIG News is now available. The issue is our first in PDF with colour and proper formatting, and features news, blog suggestions, and a lengthy article by LTAIG committee member John Alexander on his recent trip to Italy. Can you say “jealous”?? Enjoy!

There was an article in the November 1st National Post entitled “Law firms raise the bar: Legal partnerships are expanding their ranks with a wide range of professionals” (accessible here, though who knows for how long).

I came across the article because our managing partner is quoted in it, and I thought it was a great topic. In fact, I would have liked to see a longer article: there are so many people with different, yet important, skills working in law firms, and it would be fascinating to hear about their roles. Considering all the things that need to happen for a law firm to run smoothly, especially when time and accuracy are of the essence (which is always!), I think it’s a great thing that firms are increasingly seeing the value of creating specialised roles, in additional to the usual support staff.

Excerpts from the article:

“Law firms are no longer comprised simply of lawyers, secretaries and law clerks. They are taking a page out of the accounting firms’ handbook and expanding their staff to include a wide range of professionals, who are helping run the firm or advise clients.

[…]

Firms also are bringing in more non-lawyers…to add to the array of consulting services they provide clients. For example, national law firm Miller Thomson LLP runs its own consulting arm.

Managing partner Judson Whiteside says the firm has had everyone from doctors to former civil servants and environmental engineers on staff to assist in providing clients with advice. One of its adjunct services is research, leveraging its librarians to assist clients in conducting their own research or setting up libraries.”

Consultant librarians–what a neat job!

I feel extremely fortunate that in my job, I am encouraged to pursue professional development opportunities, and grow in my role, not just as someone who provides service to lawyers, administrators, and staff, but also in my career as a library technician and paraprofessional in general.

You see this phrase almost every day…every time you turn around, some company or other wants your feedback. This post deals with organizations that really need your feedback, but not so that they can make more money.

As Courtney mentioned over at Reading is Sexy, we had an LTAIG committee meeting yesterday. We made plans for a lot of exciting projects, including the 2007 salary survey (see Court’s post for more deets) and our session proposals for the 2007 BCLA conference. Our meetings are always a lot of fun, not only because I really enjoy working with my fellow committee members, but because I always come away with renewed enthusiasm, excitement, and pride in the library community I’m a part of.

We also talked about how to generate more feedback from the members of the organization. See, LTAIG operates mainly as a virtual group: the closest thing we have to “members” is our e-mail list’s subscriber base, which is about 400. The list is open to anyone, but we gear our events and activities to library support staff (technicians and assistants). The downside of not having a formal membership is that it’s hard for us to gage whether our work is successful. As volunteers, we can only hope that our efforts are useful to others: no formal membership means no formal feedback. It can be disheartening to work at something you really believe in, not knowing whether it really makes a difference. In our next newsletter, we’ll be asking some specific questions in an attempt to get a more concrete idea of how our members think we are doing.

Within the library community, there are so many people whose volunteer work benefits us all. In every organization I’m a part of, people graciously give their time and hard work because they believe in the organization’s goals, and yet so often, these efforts go unrecognized. This is not limited to the library world - every field has peer associations that depend on volunteers to run. The more work I do in a volunteer capacity, the more I realise that it’s essential to tell people when they’re doing something right. Specifics are nice, too! I’m not saying this because I want the glory, and I know I’m not alone in this sentiment. Just as we want to hear what we’re doing right, we also want to hear what we could be doing better.

So, here’s my challenge (yes, I mean you!): if you enjoy or appreciate something that a volunteer/non-profit organization does for you (a conference or seminar it hosted, an article you read in its newsletter, etc.) - let someone know! When I attend a talk that is particularly useful, I try to send a quick e-mail to the speaker to say thanks and let him/her know that I enjoyed it. You’ve heard it before, and I’ll say it again…it only takes a second, but it can make a world of difference.