Enjoy the day off.

The rest of the week, February 21st through the 24th, is reading week and the McLaughlin Building and service desks hours are reduced.

The Library has other resources related to black history, such as the following collections of documents:

• Black Thought and Culture
  
• Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice
• Black Drama

For black history in Canada, try resources such as:

• Early Canadiana Online
• Canadian Newsstand, which includes a collection of black newspapers (content from 2004 onwards, but including articles on black history)

The surveys were open for a week and both had very good response rates. Ninety-eight staff members completed the survey and over 53% prefer William’s. Obviously, many staff members use the services of William’s on a regular basis and wanted to voice their opinions.

Along with staff responses, over 1700 students completed the survey. Clearly students make up a large portion of our user group and 62% prefer William’s, while only 34% prefer Starbucks and 5% have no preference.

Both the Library and Hospitality Services continue to work together to better meet the needs of Library users. The Library is enthusiastic about the decision to keep William’s and encourages individuals to provide continuous feedback. Please contact libcomm@uoguelph.ca with comments or questions.

Whether you’re interested in fiction writing, magazine writing, tweeting or scientific journals, there is a session suited for you at the Writers’ Workshop. The workshop sessions are designed to provide hands-on, practical tips and instruction for a wide variety of writing needs.

The Writer's Workshop is a two day event on February 23rd & 24th open and free to all students, faculty, staff and alumni. The greater Guelph community is also very welcome to attend these sessions at a cost of $30 per session or $50 for a day pass. We do strongly recommend that you register early for sessions you wish to attend as seating is very limited.

Visit the conference website for a full list of the available sessions along with a brief biography of the session leaders.

If you are interested in leading a workshop, or you have comments or questions, please contact us at: libcomm@uoguelph.ca

Thank you for your interest in the Writer's Workshop, we hope to see you at the event.

Catherine Steeves, who has held the position of Associate Chief Librarian for the University of Guelph since 2004, has been appointed Acting CIO and Chief Librarian by the University Provost, Dr. Maureen Mancuso. This position is effective as of January 1, 2012.

In addition to her strong commitment to the profession of Librarianship, having served on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Library Association and past board member of the Ontario Library Association, Catherine holds a strong IT background and demonstrates strong leadership skills. Steeves holds an MLIS from the University of Western Ontario and a BA from McGill University. Her past experience includes working as the ITS Operations Manager and Government Documents Librarian for the University of Alberta Libraries.

She has been a participant in and facilitator for the Northern Exposure to Leadership Institute (in 1999 and 2002 respectively) and has also attended the Harvard/ACRL Higher Education Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians. Most recently, she completed the ARL Research Library Leadership Fellows Program which provided her with the opportunity to explore research library leadership, within the context of rapid change in higher education and research, by engaging directly with University leaders and senior administrators from a diverse set of organizations across North America. Catherine also played a significant leadership role in the transitioning of the University of Guelph Library to its new team-based service model.

Catherine can be reached at csteeves@uoguelph.ca.

Wayne and Carol aim to establish a sustainable strategy and set of tools for the archival storage, preservation and accessibility of Ontario agri-environmental research data. They hope to create a system that allows users to easily submit data sets, discover data sets and repurpose data sets.

Your University of Guelph Library is testing an improvement to Primo. This improvement is an add-in called PRIMO CENTRAL. This add-in enables the regular Primo you know and love to also search hundreds of millions of electronic resources. Resources searched include: ebooks, electronic journals, news articles and more!

We’re hoping that as you use the newly enhanced Primo, that you’ll take a moment and provide us with a few comments. Your feedback will help us evaluate the success of the Primo Central trial. Let us know how you feel by clicking the FEEDBACK link at the bottom of Primo.

To find out more about our temporarily enhanced version of Primo, click the FAQ link at the bottom of any page in Primo.

Please let us know what you think!

Your University of Guelph Library.

The BRDC is a significant step for the University of Guelph to support research in health and sciences. Approved researchers can now access the BRDC Monday through Thursday from 9:00am to 2:00pm. For further information on applying for access to Statistics Canada Master files please contact the BRDC at brdc@uoguelph.ca or Extension 56531.