2019‑2020 Lectures

Melissa Rothfus
Dalhousie University

Lecture Details
Wednesday, October 31st, 2019
1:00pm
Room 3089, Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building
6100 University Ave

Abstract: The academic community is increasingly aware of the problem of “predatory publishing” – few published authors have been spared SPAM emails from unscrupulous publishers soliciting contributions to their low-quality journals. Checklists and guidelines for ensuring the legitimacy of a journal abound; and while these provide valuable advice, they may also give a false sense of security. Between unassailable integrity and outright villainy is a grey zone of journals with poor or inconsistent quality control, difficult to distinguish from those more rigorous. Sometimes deceptive, sometimes simply bad, they pose a serious threat to the integrity of scholarly communications.

Guylaine Beaudry
Concordia University

Lecture Details
Wednesday, November 27th, 2019
4:00pm
Room 3089, Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building

Reception with light refreshments to follow.

Co-sponsored by Dalhousie Libraries

Bio: Guylaine Beaudry is Vice-Provost, Digital Strategy and University Librarian at Concordia University (Montreal). She led the major renovation of the Webster Library and the transformation of the chapel of the Grey Nuns motherhouse into a reading room. Since August 2017, she has been leading the university-wide digital strategy. She was previously Executive Director of Érudit (www.erudit.org), a publishing platform for humanities and social sciences scholarly books and journals. She wrote many publications on scholarly publishing, notably, the books La communication scientifique et le numérique, (Hermès/Lavoisier, Paris), Le nouveau monde numérique et les revues scientifiques (Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal (PUM) and La Découverte, Paris, France), that was translated and published by University of Calgary Press (Scholarly Journals in the New Digital World) and Profession : bibliothécaire  (PUM). She was recently elected member of the Royal Society of Canada and served in 2014 on its Expert Panel on the status and future of libraries and archives in Canada. She holds a doctorate in history of the book from École pratique des hautes études (Paris). Her thesis is entitled “Scholarly communications and the digital revolution: Analysis of a mutation period from a historical perspective”.

Leslie Weir
Library & Archives Canada

Lecture Details
Tuesday, January 14th, 2020
5:30-7:30pm
Room 1011, Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building
6200 University Ave

RSVP via Eventbrite by January 10th. 

Abstract: Dalhousie University’s School of Information Management will celebrate 50 years of education and innovation this year. Leslie Weir, Librarian and Archivist of Canada, will share her thoughts on important elements needed to achieve success in information science more especially in our increasingly fast-paced, digital world.  Leslie will speak to the importance of robust and trustworthy memory institutions, such as libraries, and will discuss the importance of building strong relationships with key partners as critical when addressing common challenges, and continuing to thrive in the digital era. There will be time for discussion and questions afterwards.

Bio: Leslie Weir became the Librarian and Archivist of Canada on August 30, 2019.   Before coming to Library and Archives Canada, Ms. Weir was the University librarian at the University of Ottawa from 2003 to 2018. During her tenure as University Librarian, she founded the School of Information Studies in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ottawa, and was cross-appointed as a professor.  Prior to her arrival at the university, Ms. Weir held positions at the National Library of Canada and the Statistics Canada Library.  She holds a Masters in Library Science from McGill University and a Bachelor of Arts (Canadian History) from Concordia University.

Ms. Weir has guided many transformative moments at the Canadian Research Knowledge Network and research libraries in Canada. She is one of the founding architects of Scholars Portal, the state-of-the-art research infrastructure in Ontario universities that brings together information resources and services in support of research and learning, and served as Chair of the Ontario Council of University Libraries from 2010 to 2012.  Ms. Weir served as President of Canadiana.org, where she oversaw the introduction of the Heritage Project, in collaboration with Library and Archives Canada, to digitize and make openly accessible some 60 million Heritage archival images.  She also served as President of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries from 2007 to 2009 and the Ontario Library Association in 2017.

Over the course of her career, Ms. Weir’s vision, dedication, and outstanding service have been recognized with numerous awards including the CLA/Ken Haycock Award for  Promoting Librarianship in 2015, the Ron MacDonald Distinguished Service Award from the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) in 2016, and, in 2018, the Ontario Council of University Libraries Lifetime Achievement Award and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries award for Distinguished Service to Research Librarianship.

Cheryl Stenström
Dalhousie University

Lecture Details
Tuesday, February 25th, 2020
5:30pm
Room 3089, Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building
6100 University Ave

Abstract: Dr. Stenström will be speaking about the unique value framework offered by public libraries. Working in conjunction with the California State Library, her most recent project brings together existing research and recent work in California and the UK that relate empirical findings to a proposed value framework. She'll conclude by looking how public libraries in Nova Scotia have been engaged in this work over the past several years.

Bio: Cheryl Stenström began her career in public libraries in 1993, and has since worked as a reference librarian in a large urban library, a talking book producer, a public library consultant and public library CEO. After graduating from Queensland University of Technology's PhD program in 2012, she began teaching full time at San Jose State University's iSchool. She also continues to work as a Library Consultant, primarily in the area of organizational management, working with organizations such as the University of British Columbia, the Saskatoon Public Library, the Downey Unified School District, and the Surry Public Library. Dr. Stenström’s research interests are focused on social influence and decision making in the political arena, particularly as it affects funding for libraries. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia's iSchool and lives in Mahone Bay, NS.

Joan M. Schwartz
Queen's University

Lecture Details
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020
5:30pm
Room 3089, Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building
6100 University Ave

Abstract: Institutions, under pressure from administrators, from funding sources, and from the user-public, make photographs available online as searchable single items. In the process, meaningful information about the physical and intellectual contexts of creation, circulation, and viewing is sacrificed at the altar of speed, quantity, convenience, and the almighty dollar. In this lecture, I am concerned with troubling changes, subtle and otherwise, brought about by “[presti]digit[iz]ation” --  scanning for ease of access, whereby materiality, context, and meaning are lost. Drawing on professional experience as a photo-archivist and scholarly interests as a photographic historian, I critique examples of digitization and description initiatives, with a view to highlighting those instances for which institutions can justly be accused of "iCrimes and Misdemeanours" and encouraging best practices grounded in a deeper understanding of the nature and power of photographs as a form of visual communication, and in a broader appreciation of the critical differences between search and research, content and meaning underpinning access to and use of online images. 

Bio: A former specialist in photography acquisition and research at the National Archives of Canada, Ottawa (1977-2003), Joan M. Schwartz is Professor, Art History and Art Conservation (cross-appointed to Geography) at Queen’s University, Kingston. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and the Society of American Archivists, she is co-editor of Picturing Place (with James R. Ryan) and of Archives, Records, and Power (with the late Terry Cook), and has published widely on photography and the geographical imagination, and on archives as spaces of power.  Her current SSHRCC-funded research, entitled “Picturing ‘Canada’: Photographic Images and Geographical Imaginings in British North America, 1839-1889”, focuses on the role of photography in the making of early modern Canada.  She will be delivering the McKay Lecture in the Department of History on March 5^th, 2020 based on her research into the life and legacy of pioneer British Columbia photographer, Frederick Dally.