No. 470 - July 14, 2021

  • Coming Events:

    - Panel Discussion: "Perspectives on Special Librarianship"
    - Research Ethics Workshop: "Conducting research with or about human participants"

  • Important Dates:

    - Monday, August 2, 2021 - Civic Holiday

  • News & Announcements:

    - Call for Nominations: Spirit of Librarianship and Fantastic FIMS
    - Anabel Quan-Haase is the new Rogers Chair
    - Richard Booth appointed Chair of the HIS Graduate Program
    - Western's Return to Campus Questionnaire has moved
    - Western's new strategic plan, Towards Western at 150
    - In Memoriam: Eugenia Canas
    - In Memoriam: Jen Holland (MLIS alumna)

    Awards & Accomplishments:

    - Amanda Grzyb
    - Joanna Redden

  • Publications & Presentations:

    - Melissa Alder
    - Magnus Berg
    - Alissa Centivany
    - Jessica Dinan (MLIS'21)
    - Amy Hadley
    - Marni Harrington
    - Heather Hill
    - Marnie James (MLIS'20)
    - Amber Matthews
    - Serena Mendizabal
    - Greg Nightingale (PhD'20, LIS)
    - Danica Pawlick-Potts
    - Anabel Quan-Haase
    - Jason Richards
    - Michael Ridley
    - Paulette Rothbauer
    - Kamran Sedig
    - Lucia Cedeira Serantes
    - Dan Smoke
    - Mary Lou Smoke
    - Luke Stark

  • In the Media:

    - Oeishi Bhattacharjee
    - Amanda Grzyb

  • Additional Activities of Note:

    - Sarah Cornwell
    - Samanta Krishnapillai (MHIS'20)

  • News from the FIMS Graduate Library:

  • Next Issue:


Coming Events


Panel Discussion: "Perspectives on Special Librarianship"
Monday, July 19, 2021
6:40 p.m - 7:50 p.m.
Via Zoom (Link here, Passcode: LIS9650)
Panelists: Rob Craig, Instructor for the Special Library course, Michael McAlpine, Manager, Information, Research & Knowledge - Siskinds, and Kelli Jerome, Regional Librarian, Ministry of the Solicitor General - Institutional Services. During this session, they'll talk about benefits and challenges of being a special librarian, how COVID has impacted being a special librarian and what skills are essential for surviving as a special librarian.

Research Ethics Workshop: "Conducting research with or about human participants"
Wednesday, July 21, 2021
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Via Zoom
Are you considering a Guided Research Project, a Major Research Project or starting your thesis research next term? If your research involves collecting data from or about people, attendance at this human research ethics workshop is required before submitting any Guided Research, Major Research or thesis research proposal for the Fall 2021 term. You can also attend if you're considering a research project in a subsequent term, though the same workshop will be offered in the Fall 2021 and Winter 2022 terms. If you have already received ethics approval for your research/data collection, attendance is not required. To register, please email Shelley Long at slong@uwo.ca.


Important Dates



- Monday, August 2, 2021 - Civic Holiday


News & Announcements


Call for Nominations: Spirit of Librarianship and Fantastic FIMS
Nominations for the Spirit of Librarianship and Fantastic FIMS awards are now open! You have until Friday, July 23, 2021 at midnight to submit nominations for these awards. To submit a nomination, check your Western email for the call out from Max Manga (mmanga2@uwo.ca) and reply to the message. Your nomination should include an explanation as to why you are nominating that individual. You can submit multiple nominations.

Anabel Quan-Haase takes position as the FIMS Rogers Chair
Professor Anabel Quan-Haase, jointly appointed in FIMS and the Department of Sociology, is the new Rogers Chair of Studies in Journalism and New Information Technology for 2021-2023. Planning is underway for a project titled "COVID and Social Media" and over the course of her chairship she intends to host guest lectures with Canadian and international scholars and journalists, in-house panels in FIMS and at Western, along with opportunities for grad and undergrad research and symposium participation. Stay tuned for event information!

Richard Booth appointed Chair of the Health Information Science Graduate Program
Associate Professor Richard Booth has been appointed as the Chair of the Health Information Science Graduate Program. He will commence his position on July 1, 2021.

Booth has a proven record of innovation and excellence as a professor, student supervisor, and researcher at the Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing, Western University. He brings a clinical background in mental health nursing, with a research program exploring digital health, data, and health sciences education. He has been an affiliated faculty member with the Health Information Science Program since 2013 and is also a scientist with the Lawson Health Research Institute.

Western's new strategic plan, Towards Western at 150
Western recently released its new strategic plan, Towards Western at 150, which was approved by the University Senate on June 11, 2021.

Western's Return to Campus Questionnaire has moved
On June 21, 2021, Western's Return to Campus Questionnaire moved from My Human Resources to Qualtrics. You will be able to link to the questionnaire using a personal link you will find in a daily reminder email you will receive. As this link is unique to you, please do not forward or share. Alternatively, you may navigate directly to the questionnaire on Qualtrics and log in, or access it directly through the Western mobile app to complete before coming to campus. If you have any questions about the changes that took place on June 21, or if you need further information, please email ahutch2@uwo.ca.

In Memoriam: Eugenia Canas
News that Eugenia Canas, PhD'19 HIS, passed away has deeply saddened the FIMS community. She passed away peacefully on June 18, 2021, at the age of 47. Her obituary can be found online.

Eugenia expressed her wish to have a memorial in her honour in the future when restrictions have been lifted. We will pass along the details when they're available. A tribute from HIS students is also to come.

To honour Eugenia's passion to support students and young people more broadly, a scholarship has been established in her name, which will provide funding support for a student in Western University's Health Information Science Graduate Program. If you would like to make a donation, please visit: https://westernconnect.ca/canasmemorial

In Memoriam: Jen Holland
The FIMS community was saddened to learn that Jen Holland, MLIS'01, passed away on July 3, 2021, at the age of 50. Her obituary can be found online.


Awards & Accomplishments


Associate Professor Amanda Grzyb is the project director of Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador, an international research project which recently received a seven-year, $2.5-million SSHRC partnership grant. The grant announcement was featured in the Western News article, "El Salvador research project receives major grant," and the FIMS article "SSHRC Partnership Grant will fund collaborative documentation and commemoration of the Salvadoran Civil War."

Assistant Professor Joanna Redden is involved in two major research projects that were recently awarded funding. The Responsible Artificial Intelligence (RAI) initiative received $1.65 from NSERC's CREATE program, and 'Aging in Data' was awarded a SSHRC partnership grant for $2.5 million. Details of the funding can be found in the FIMS article, "Major funding secured for responsible-use AI program and Aging in Data research project."


Publications & Presentations


Magnus Berg, MLIS student, Jessica Dinan (MLIS'21), Jason Richards, MLIS student, and Assistant Professor Melissa Adler presented the paper "Reflecting the Moment in Which They Were Written: Evaluating North American Finding Aids for Radical Archival Empathy" at the Conference of the Association of Canadian Archivists on June 11, 2021.

Assistant Professor Melissa Adler, Greg Nightingale (PhD'20, LIS), and Marnie James, (MLIS'20) presented the panel "Desire in Sight: The Aesthetics of Knowledge Organization" at CAPAL on May 20, 2021.

Assistant Professor Alissa Centivany participated in a roundtable discussion on Open Source and the Right to Repair on July 13, 2021. The event was hosted by The Glia Project on Twitter Spaces.

Associate Professor Heather Hill authored an article titled, "A thematic analysis of library association policies on services to persons with disabilities," published in the Journal of Documentation on July 8, 2021.

Amber Matthews, LIS PhD student, authored the following articles:

Matthews, Amber. 2021. "Reversing the Gaze on Race, Social Justice, and Inclusion in Public Librarianship." Education for Information, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.3233/EFI-211514.

Matthews, Amber. 2021. "Reading the Silence: Canadian Library Responses to Racial Injustice." Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 44(1). https://doi.org/10.5206/cjilsrcsib.v44i1.11008.

Martin Nord, LIS PhD candidate, presented "Echoing Memories Through Documents: The United Church of Canada's Evolving Collective Memory," at the Memory Studies Association Fifth Annual Conference (held virtually), Warsaw, Poland, on July 9, 2021.

Professor Anabel Quan-Haase co-authored the article titled, "Public health agencies outreach through Instagram during the COVID-19 pandemic," published July 2021 in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

Michael Ridley, LIS PhD student, and Danica Pawlick-Potts, LIS PhD student, published the article, "Algorithmic Literacy and the Role for Libraries," in Information Technology and Libraries.

Associate Professor Paulette Rothbauer, Amy Hadley, MLIS student, Associate Librarian Marni Harrington, Associate Professor Heather Hill, Serena Mendizabal, FIMS undergraduate fellow, Danica Pawlick-Potts, LIS PhD student, Adjunct Professor (Indigenous Studies) Dan Smoke and Adjunct Professor (Indigenous Studies) Mary Lou Smoke published the following project report:

Rothbauer, Paulette, Amy Hadley, Marni Harrington, Heather Hill, Serena Mendizabal, Danica Pawlick-Potts, Dan Smoke, and Mary Lou Smoke. 2021. "The Smoke Signals Radio Show Archive Project: An Introduction". KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 5(1). https://doi.org/10.18357/kula.131

Associate Professor Paulette Rothbauer and FIMS instructor Lucia Cedeira Serantes, with colleagues Knut Oterholm and Kjell Ivar Skerdingstad (Oslo Met University), presented papers as part of a symposium they organized called "Making Time, Taking Time: Plotting the Temporalities of the Reading Experience" at the 2021 Annual Meeting for the Society of the Empirical Study of Literature (IGEL), hosted by the University of Liverpool on June 23, 2021.

Professor Kamran Sedig co-authored the following article:
Salimiparsa, M., Lizotte, D., & Sedig, K. (2021). "A User-Centered Design of Explainable AI for Clinical Decision Support." Proceedings of the Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

Assistant Professor Luke Stark co-authored the article, "Responsible Computing During COVID-19 and Beyond," published in Communications of the ACM in July 2021.

Stark also gave a keynote talk at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Workshop on Fair, Data Efficient and Trusted Computer Vision, titled, "Darwin's Animoji: Histories of Racialization in Everyday Facial Analysis," on June 25, 2021.


In the Media


FIMS Director of Operations Oeishi Bhattacharjee was featured in the Western News article, "Giving Western leaders the tools to succeed," for her participation in the 2020-21 Western Excellence in Leadership program. The article was published on June 17, 2021.

Associate Professor Amanda Grzyb was featured in the Western News article, "El Salvador research project receives major grant," published on June 16, 2021.


Additional Activities of Note


The latest episode of the "So What? The Podcast About LIS Research" podcast features LIS PhD student Sarah Cornwell in a discussion of the largest systematic effort to classify languages: The Ethnologue. Listen to the episode here.

Samanta Krishnapillai (MHIS'20) is the founder, executive director and editor in chief of the On Canada Project, a grassroots project that uses volunteerism and social media to distribute information about current issues impacting Canadians to Millennials and Gen Z online. The project recently released, "Settlers Take Action," a resource guide outlining how non-Indigenous people can stand in solidarity with Indigenous Peoples and take actionable steps in reconciliation. To read the guide and connect with resources, visit the Settlers Take Action page.


News from the FIMS Graduate Library


Fall 2021 Course Readings
FIMS Graduate instructors - let us take care of your course readings this term.
You can find instructions for accessing the Course Readings Service here.
Alternatively, you can email your syllabus to fimslib@uwo.ca and we will start finding the materials you need.

Emerging Library & Information Perspectives 2021 Publication
We are so excited to announce the publication of the fourth volume of Emerging Library & Information Perspectives (ELIP)! ELIP is an open access, peer-reviewed, student run journal in the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program at Western University. The journal is published by the FIMS Graduate Library and hosted by Western Libraries.

The compassionate and creative articles, reflections, interviews and reviews in this second stay-at-home edition capture the breadth and depth of innovation in library practice. Thank you to our authors, volunteers, student peer reviewers, Editorial Team Advisors, Editorial Advisory Board Members, and Technical Advisors for their time and effort.

The journal can be viewed here: https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/elip/index

Virtual Drop-In Hours
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays - 12:00 p.m. 1:00 p.m.
On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, Kendall or Sara will be staffing our virtual service desk from 12-1pm. Ask us anything: from citation help to finding the best resources for your assignments. Whether you have a library-related question or just want to check in and see a friendly face, we hope you'll join us. A Zoom link will be sent to your email before drop-in hours, reminding you to drop in!

Contact us!
Although our physical location is closed, we are still here to help you with any library-related questions.
We can help with access to resources and services for your teaching, learning and research.
You can email us (fimslib@uwo.ca) or call and leave a message (519-661-2111 x88488).
We are available to offer assistance Monday to Friday, 9am to 4:30pm.


Next Issue


The Grad Bulletin is your source for news, announcements, and events pertaining to FIMS graduate programs. Submissions from the FIMS community are always welcome and may be sent via e-mail to fims-communications@uwo.ca.

The next issue of the FIMS Graduate Bulletin will be published on Wednesday, August 11, 2021. The deadline for submissions is noon on Tuesday, August 10, 2021.