No. 486 - June 15, 2022

  • Coming Events:

    - TCAF Libraries & Education Day

  • Important Dates:

    - Tuesday, June 21, 2022 - National Indigenous Peoples Day
    - Thursday, June 23, 2022 - FIMS Convocation (afternoon ceremony, reception at 5PM)
    - Tuesday, June 28, 2022 - Meeting of the Board of Governors (10AM, Zoom)
    - Thursday, June 30 - Friday, July 1, 2022 - Canada holiday (FIMS offices closed)

  • News & Announcements:

    - Sam Trosow announces candidacy for City Council, Ward 6

  • Awards & Accomplishments:

    - Yimin Chen
    - Daniel Clarkson Fisher
    - Marni Harrington
    - Mark Rayner
    - Paulette Rothbauer
    - Percy Sherwood
    - Nafiz Shuva

  • Publications & Presentations:

    - Lucia Cedeira Serantes
    - Nick Dyer-Witheford
    - Alessandra Mularoni
    - Anabel Quan-Haase
    - Effie Sapuridis
    - Kamran Sedig
    - Percy Sherwood
    - Luke Stark

  • In the Media:

    - Anabel Quan-Haase
    - Bessie Sullivan

  • Additional Activities of Note:

    - Ashleigh Yates-MacKay (MLIS'17)

  • News from the FIMS Graduate Library:

    - Films available on the Graduate Library website
    - Terrace news

  • Next Issue:


Coming Events


TCAF Libraries & Education Day
Friday, June 17, 2022
10:00 a.m.
Via Zoom
Libraries & Education Day is a free day of virtual programming aimed at teachers, teacher-librarians, librarians, library workers, and people in similar roles who want to know more about incorporating comics and graphic novels into their collections and classrooms. Information-rich presentations, panel discussions, and workshops impart valuable information about building collections, improving circulation, targeting important demographics, and integrating comics into classroom use. Featuring Nate Powell as keynote speaker. More information/registration.


Important Dates


- Tuesday, June 21, 2022 - National Indigenous Peoples Day
- Thursday, June 23, 2022 - FIMS Convocation (afternoon ceremony, reception at 5PM)
- Tuesday, June 28, 2022 - Meeting of the Board of Governors (10AM, Zoom)
- Thursday, June 30 - Friday, July 1, 2022 - Canada Day holiday (FIMS offices closed)


News & Notes


Sam Trosow announces candidacy for City Council, Ward 6
Associate Professor Sam Trosow has announced his candidacy for London City Councillor, Ward 6, for the next Municipal Elections taking place on October 24, 2022. Ward 6 runs north from Oxford Street to the boundary of the Thames River along Windermere Road, and east from Wonderland Road to Adelaide Street. Professor Trosow has identified housing affordability and the environmental crisis as key issues he would like to focus on. Ward 6 is currently represented by Miriam Hamou. More information about candidates and the elections.


Awards & Accomplishments


Yimin Chen, LIS PhD candidate, successfully defended his thesis What we talk about when we talk about trolling; or, the unexpected virtue of lulz on June 9, 2022.

Daniel Clarkson Fisher, MLIS'22, was announced as the winner of the PLG's Miriam Braverman Memorial Prize on May 15. Fisher's winning paper is titled "A Promised (but Ultimately Unreachable) Land," and focuses on whether political neutrality can truly exist in librarianship and what harm it may cause. More about Fisher's win can be read in "MLIS student wins the PLG's Braverman Memorial Prize," published on the FIMS website.

Recently retired Library Director Marni Harrington and Associate Professor Paulette Rothbauer were recognized with a Best Overall Paper Award for their paper "Honouring a Love of Books and Reading in Library & Information Science" at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Information Science/l'association Canadienne des sciences de l'information.

FIMS lecturer Mark Rayner's latest novel, Alpha Max (Nov 2021), won an IndieReader Discovery Award for Best Cover Design. Details about the award and Alpha Max's cover design can be found on markarayner.com.

Percy Sherwood, Media Studies PhD candidate, was selected as the 2022 Great Ideas for Teaching (GIFT) Award winner by the Centre for Teaching and Learning for his idea entitled “Storytelling in the digital age.” His assignment aims for students to demonstrate an appreciation that personal experiences and feelings are legitimate sources of knowledge by engaging in a process of self-reflection.

Assistant Professor Nafiz Shuva was awarded the Student-to-CAIS-Award for his paper entitled, "'They act like we are going to Heaven': Information crafting, misinformation, and settlement of Bangladeshi immigrants in Canada," based on work conducted while he was a doctoral candidate at FIMS.


Publications & Presentations


Assistant Professor Lucia Cedeira Serantes has organized and will moderate the roundtable "Canadian Comics Past, Present, and Future: The Role of GLAM Institutions in the Preservation, Creation of, and Advocacy for Canadian Comics" at the Toronto Comics Art Festival Academic Symposium. In this panel she will also present along with Dan Sich (UWO Teaching and Learning librarian) on the work that a group of Western librarians are currently developing around the access to the library's comics collections.

Professor Nick Dyer-Witheford and Media Studies PhD candidate Alessandra Mularoni published the following article:

"Framing Big Tech: News Media, Digital Capital and the Antitrust Movement" in the Political Economy of Communication.

Professor Anabel Quan-Haase co-authored an article titled "Quantifying depression-related language on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic," published in the International Journal of Population Data Science.

Media Studies PhD candidate Effie Sapuridis co-authored an article titled "Self-Insert FanFiction as Digital Technology of the Self" on May 30 in a special issue of Humanities, titled "The Past, Present and Future of Fan-Fiction."

Professor Kamran Sedig co-authored the following article:

Rostamzadeh, Neda, Sheikh S. Abdullah, Kamran Sedig, Amit X. Garg, and Eric McArthur. 2022. "Visual Analytics for Predicting Disease Outcomes Using Laboratory Test Results" Informatics 9, no. 1: 17.
https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics9010017 

Percy Sherwood, Media Studies PhD candidate, presented his teaching idea entitled “Storytelling in the digital age” live to an interdisciplinary audience of graduate and postdoctoral scholars at the Centre for Teaching and Learning’s Own Your Future: May Conference on Teaching held on May 7, 2022.

Assistant Professor Luke Stark co-authored a law review article titled, "Physiognomic Artificial Intelligence" in the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal, Volume XXXII, Number 4 (2022).

Professor Stark also recently participated in two panels. On May 31st he spoke as part of an invited panel on "Trust and Values" at Policy Horizons Canada's Futures Week, and on June 3 he spoke as part of an invited panel on the ethical implications of AI at the 35th Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence.


In the Media


Professor Anabel Quan-Haase joined CBC Afternoon Drive to discuss her research on how comfort levels with digital communication have changed during the pandemic.

FIMS Instructor Bessie Sullivan (currently teaching LIS 9610 - Public Libraries) is featured in an article titled "Orillia library encounters 'hatred' for hosting drag-queen event," published on June 8 in Barrie Today. Sullivan is the CEO of the Orillia Public Library.


Additional Activities of Note


Ashleigh Yates-Mackay (MLIS 2017) joined Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada’s (IRCC) Digital Strategy Branch as an Information Management Analyst. She is working on projects related to knowledge management, anti-racism strategies, and employee development.


News from the Graduate Library


Films on the FIMS Grad Library Website:
The library has acquired two films that may be of interest to the FIMS community. Both are digital and are hosted on the Electronic Resources page on the intranet.

Our Dance of Revolution

Our Dance of Revolution tells the story of how Black queer folks in Toronto faced every adversity, from invisibility to police brutality, and rose up to become a vibrant, triple-snap-fierce community. It is a human-scale reckoning of how audacious individuals find themselves by finding others, and how they muster the courage, tenacity, and creativity to prevail against the forces of marginalization.

Portrait of Resistance: The Art of Activism of Carol Conde & Karl Beveridge

As the wealth divide and environmental crises grip public awareness, the world is finally catching up to the vision and ideas of two artist/activists who make work for social change. Inspired by their playful wit and visual innovation, PORTRAIT OF RESISTANCE intimately captures Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge as they create provocative staged photographs about the environment, the rights of workers, and the current global financial crisis. It charts Condé’s and Beveridge’s accomplishments from the 1970s to the present, observing the couple at work on current projects and delving into their shared history.

Terrace

The terrace outside the FIMS Grad Library continues to be open to students, staff and faculty of the FIMS community. No masks are required and eating is permitted. Come and enjoy your lunch or just grab a few minutes of fresh air during your break. It's a great little spot.


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 summer issue of the Grad Bulletin will be published on Wednesday, July 20, 2022. The deadline for submissions is noon on Tuesday, July 19, 2022.