Unionization is a significant yet under-discussed topic in librarianship. In this episode Lindsay Adoranti explores Kitchener Public Library’s unionization journey to better understand the dynamics of workplace advocacy, solidarity, and the broader implications for library workers' rights https://sowhat.fims.uwo.ca/4-1-library-unionization
You never have to apologize for your reading habits. Despite the halo effect that is given to people who say they are “readers”, the reading community is not one homogenous group; It is greatly fragmented and there is always drama and in-fighting taking place. I wanted to provide a defense for those who get ridiculed for enjoying Young Adult literature and show that these demographics are merely suggestions, not rigid rules to follow. https://sowhat.fims.uwo.ca/3-7-teens-and-new-adults-in-librar...
Why is it so difficult to describe people in social classification? This podcast examines this topic through the warrant, meaning the lens used to make decisions about how to describe things in a classification system. Specifically, the experience of disabled people is explored using some of the most common sources of warrant, including literary and scientific warrant. https://sowhat.fims.uwo.ca/3-6-warrant-and-disability/
With a background at the St. Jerome’s University College’s Digital Research Arts and Graphic Environmental Networks lab as a paleographer, and manuscript digitizer for six years, Jordan Tardif explores the impact of Manuscript Digitization on Manuscript Studies. Manuscript repositories and manuscript libraries are libraries as well, and thus the same digitization principles developed in traditional libraries can also apply to materials being digitized by archives, such as newspapers, letters, an...
In this episode Clarese Greig explores Digital Literacy in Public Libraries with her co-workers. The library branch they work at deals with more tech questions than can be handled most days, so the conversations usually veer towards tech, digital literacy and patron needs. To quote Clarese: "While I do not think it is the library’s responsibility to fix every issue that arises in society, I do think it is the library’s responsibility to take inventory of the issues facing society to see where th...
In 2021 Daniel Clarkson Fisher inaugurated an online Tumblr site with the goal of documenting instances of actual libraries appearing in film (https://costarringyourlocallibrary.tumblr.com). Inspired by Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself (2004), it is a mix of public scholarship, architectural appreciation, and audiovisual essayism. Show notes at: https://sowhat.fims.uwo.ca/3-3-co-starring-your-local-library/
Libraries are places of knowledge sharing, and this sharing is in more than just books. Libraries can be very important for sharing information and expertise that normally would be difficult to find otherwise. What other public institutions can both create and share resources that reach audiences like libraries do? What other public institutions could do events like workshops about internet privacy and security? This is an important space where libraries can operate in. Computer security and pri...
What gems are hidden in the vast stacks of your local public library? Today we are joined by Jeff Causier, a library staff member who has works in the London Room Archives of the London Public Library. He will tell our listeners what sort of work he does in a specialized department of a public library, the technology he uses daily to answer complicated reference questions and share a very special story about the most valuable book he found hidden within the closed stacks of the London Room Show ...
Philosophy and library science may seem an unlikely combination, but they are closely connected disciplines. In this casual and accessible conversation Mike and Lindsay explore the philosophical themes underlying three important concepts in classification and indexing: Ontology and epistemology, equivalence, and warrant. Show notes: https://sowhat.fims.uwo.ca/2-5-the-greatest-crossover-philosophy-and-library-science
LIS has been described as everyone's second career. Today we are joined by Brooke Brassard, a new Library Science student who has previously earned a PhD in the field of Religious Studies. She describes her research into the Latter-Day Saints movement in Canada, the process of translating a thesis into a book, and her observations of the intersection of LIS and Religious Studies. Transcript: https://sowhat.fims.uwo.ca/2-4-religious-studies-and-lis/
What is the role of the public library? Is it a bastion of high culture, dedicated to the betterment of the public? Or is it a refuge for the public, serving the most popular fare? The question of how the public library has been perceived is the subject of today's episode. We are joined by Sofia Beraldo, Chelsea Coubry-Forte, Erin Isings, Katrina Desjardins, Kate McCandless and Pam McKenzie, an interdisciplinary research team based at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the Universit...
"A language is a dialect with an army and navy" is an adage was popularized by sociolinguist and Yiddish scholar Max Weinreich. So what does this mean for our classification of languages? And, what impact does our classification of languages have on the people who speak them? In today's episode our guest Sarah Cornwell explores the largest systematic effort to classify languages: The Ethnologue, as well as its history, impact, and alternatives. Transcript: https://sowhat.fims.uwo.ca/2-2-what-is-...
How we remember the past shapes our future. In this episode Joel Sherlock shares some of his experience as the manager of Genealogical and Archival Research at Indigenous Services Canada. What does research in an archives look like? Who goes to such an archives, and why? This interview offers a glimpse of these topics as well as the enduring legacy of the Canadian government's treatment of First Nations peoples. [Editor’s note, the Jay Treaty was signed in 1794, not 1793] This episode is part of...
Emerging Library & Information Perspectives (ELIP) - the open access, peer-reviewed journal managed by the students in the MLIS program at Western University and published by the FIMS Graduate Library - illustrates the importance of engaging LIS students as active participants in the scholarly communications ecosystem. It also highlights the voices of emerging scholars with important new perspectives. Additional details and transcript available from our website: https://sowhat.fims.uwo.ca/1-...
In this interview Dr. Grant Campbell from the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University discusses dementia, both his research and how it has affected his loved ones. He makes sometimes surprising connections between the interactions of people living with dementia and their caregivers and topics such as music theory, cataloguing, and information organization. From Ranganathan’s faceted classification to Grice’s implicatures, Campbell makes use of many LIS concepts to help gra...
Recently, three professors at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University, Jacquelyn Burkell, Alissa Centivany and Alison Hearn, spoke at the London Public Library about the concept of your data double. As you scan social media, search Google or Bing, or just aimless wander the net, data about you and your habits, interests and behaviours are being collected. Collected, sold and repurposed for purposes unbeknownst to you. Your data double, you might want to get to know it....
In Episode 1.5 of the So What? podcast released in December last year we interviewed Alan Harnum of the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University in Toronto. We talked about the IDRC, its philosophy, and the way it works. This episode continues that discussion and focuses on two specific projects that exemplify the challenges and opportunities in the inclusive design area: the Social Justice Repair Kit and Co-Designing Inclusive Cities project. A transcript of this episode is available...
What a simple question and what an intriguing set of responses! This question (“What is the first thing you can remember about reading?”) has been asked by Catherine Ross for many years as part of her research into reading and readers. We asked a number of people this and then posed the question back to Dr. Ross and her two research colleagues, Lynne McKechnie and Paulette Rothbauer. A transcript of this episode is available online: https://sowhat.fims.uwo.ca/1-6-what-do-you-first-remember-about...
Alan Harnum is an Inclusive Developer at the Inclusive Design Research Centre (IDRC) at OCAD University in Toronto. His work, and that of the IDRC, is focused on ensuring that emerging information technologies and practices are designed inclusively. Using approaches such as co-design, community engaged scholarship, and an activist perspective, the IDRC epitomizes the “nothing about us without us” philosophy of the disability community. Alan talks about his role, key principles of software design...
If a Troll is only semi-reformed are they now neutral? What would cause a person to turn neutral... Lust for gold? Power? Or were they just born with hearts full of neutrality? We join Yimin Chen as he describes his relationship with trolling in the context of modern issues like cyberbullying. This episode tracks Yimin’s evolving understanding of trolling, both for himself and others, and what it may mean for the future of our online lives. A transcript of this episode is available from our webs...
Camille Callison joins us to discuss the origins and developments of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee of the CFLA-FCAB (Canadian Federation of Library Associations - Fédération Canadienne des Associations de Bibliothèques). In addition to summarizing the Committee’s recommendation and projects, Camille discusses the Medicine Wheel framework used by the Committee; acknowledges the many contributors that supported the development of the Committee’s recommendations and report; and, touches on...
Games of all types are popular in libraries. However, the diversity of games and gaming formats present some unique cataloguing challenges. Mackenzie Johnson spoke with Emma Cross from Carleton University about those challenges and the current thinking about how to address them. Their conversation covers best practices, recommendations for those starting a gaming collection, and why games (and cataloguing games) matter. A transcript of this episode is available from our website: http://sowhat.fi...
Early in 2018 Catherine Ross, Lynne McKechnie, and Paulette Rothbauer published “Reading Still Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries, and Community.” Twelve years after their first book on the topic, “Reading Matters,” the authors discuss reading, readers, the role of libraries, changing technologies and, emphatically, why reading still matters. A transcript of this episode is available from our website: http://sowhat.fims.uwo.ca/1-1-reading-still-matters/ Episode producer:...
The Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA) was created in 2016 following the demise of the Canadian Library Association. Why do libraries and library workers need CFLA? At the 2018 CFLA Annual Forum held in Regina, Mike Ridley, a PhD student at FIMS, Western University and a former Board member of the Canadian Library Association, attended the wine and cheese social event do ask those present that question. The pinot noir and brie were good, but the responses were excellent. A transc...
The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you can speak aloud. Library and information science has long been bastion against the restriction of free inquiry, be it the banned book or the taboo thought. In this episode Jen Opoku and Alex Mayhew delve deep into taboo thoughts about aging and death. Meandering and philosophical, no topic is off the table in this discussion. Highlights include discussion of sexuality of the elderly, religious context of death, and the desirability...
To what extent are children’s picture books containing LGBTQ+ representations being included in the collections of Ontario public libraries? Jamie Orr sat down with Alyssa Duke, Melissa Martin, Danielle Betteridge, and Ashley Yeats-McKay, fellow MLIS grad students at FIMS, Western University, to talk about their research project which asks that exact question. This episode describes the nature of their research, some early findings, and their reflections on the implications of their work. A futu...
