Booking Library Instruction for Spring 2022!

Posted on November 24, 2021 by Allison Sullivan

With our semester back on campus almost behind us, we at the library are looking forward to continuing to support faculty and students with our effective, innovative, and relevant library instruction. We continue to offer a number of options for online and in-person instruction aimed to help your students find and interact with appropriate sources catered specifically to their assignments at hand.

Online, we offer both asynchronous tutorials and synchronous workshops over Zoom. We are also now able to offer interactive tutorials not only in our L108 teaching lab, but are also able to use our flexible classroom L216 thanks to a new set of teaching laptops in the library. If you are interested in learning more about how an information literacy workshop can help your class achieve their assignment goals, please reach out to your liaison librarian.

For more information, see the links and guides below.

Continue reading →

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Organization of Information in Libraries – Not As Innocent As You Think

Posted on November 15, 2021 by Joyce Wong

How we organize information is laden with value related to power structures and worldview. Langara Library, as with most academic libraries uses the Library of Congress classification scheme and subject headings to organize our collection, especially books and media materials. The system has an embedded Euro-centric worldview along with its attendant colonial practices. Titles by and about Indigenous peoples are overwhelmingly classed in history and ethnographic studies. For example, most books about Indigenous peoples in Canada are found in the E’s and FC’s call number section under the history of North America. Explicit in this organization is that Indigenous peoples are ‘cultures of the past” for study. Names of tribes in LC also continue to be defined by ethnographic studies rather than names used by the Indigenous peoples themselves. 

So I started a journey back in May of this year to decolonize our book collection, in particular titles about Indigenous art and artists. My starting point was to locate some best practices on changing our descriptive work such as cataloguing and classification and to identify concrete ways to support the Indigenization of the curriculum. Of course, the best journeys, at least those in memorable stories, meander and sometimes never quite arrive at a destination point. But I would like to share some of my stopping points….

You can read about my journey indigenous-art-book-collection-decolonize-project or watch a short presentation

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York University v. Access Copyright: A huge copyright win for education

Posted on August 18, 2021 by Lindsay Tripp

On July 30, 2021, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) issued its long-awaited decision in the York University v. Access Copyright case. Access Copyright, the collective that licences copying of published literary works on behalf of creators and publishers in Canada, initiated the lawsuit back in 2013.

There were two main issues in the case:

  1. whether an Access Copyright license is mandatory for post-secondary institutions (this is the fee per FTE student that Langara paid to Access Copyright prior to September 2013), and;
  2. whether York’s fair dealing guidelines, which are akin to Langara’s guidelines, are indeed fair to copyright owners.

Continue reading →

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All together now: Building community through student book clubs

Posted on August 18, 2021 by Lindsay Tripp

The COVID era has challenged us all in ways we couldn’t have anticipated 17+ months ago. In addition to physical, mental, and emotional fatigue, many of our classmates and coworkers report feeling isolated and disconnected from community.

Using graphic novels as a touchstone, Indigenous Education & Services (IES) and Langara Library have been hosting semesterly student book clubs to hold (virtual) space for folks to come together. Continue reading →

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Library Instruction continues apace! Time to book for Fall 2021.

Posted on August 17, 2021 by Allison Sullivan

With our return to campus and re-opening of the library, your Liaison Librarians are ready to return to in-person workshops along side our excellent virtual services! If you’re planning to have your students gather resources, synthesize information, and ground their analyses in existing research, consider adding a library workshop to your course syllabus!

Throughout the last year and a half, we have been offering synchronous and asynchronous custom workshops, research and resource help guides catered to your assignments, and our existing suite of online tutorials. None of those will go away, but we are excited to add back the possibility of in-person workshops either in the library teaching classrooms (L108 and L216) or in your own classroom. Contact your liaison librarian for more information!

For more information, see the links and guides below.

Continue reading →

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Ezproxy New Login Screen – June 1, 2021

Posted on May 28, 2021 by Philip Wong

Ezproxy will have a new login screen this summer!

Ezproxy is a web proxy server providing off-campus access to library’s licensed resources. Through authentication, legitimate Langara users can access online resources seamlessly as if they are accessing from on-campus. Beginning June 1, the Ezproxy login screen will have a new look!

Students and staff will no longer need to log in with Langara ID. Instead, they will log in with their Langara email account.

The Langara email account allows users to access multiple resources in the campus. These include Office 365 Email, Brightspace, LinkedIn Learning and more. If you have already logged in to any of these resources, you do not need to login again to Ezproxy in the same browser session.

New login screen

Current Langara students and employees should select “Log in with Langara Email account”. When you select this, the following familiar login screen will display if you have not logged in before.

If you have any questions, please contact Philip Wong (philip.wong@langara.ca) or Julie Cole (jcole@langara.ca).

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Library Catalogue Maintenance – June 2, 2021

Posted on May 25, 2021 by Philip Wong

The Library online catalogue system will be undergoing a software upgrade.

WHEN? Wednesday, June 2, 8am-noon

What is available during this time:

  • borrowing library materials at the Check Out Desk

What are NOT available during this time:

  • searching in the online catalogue (Books & Media search)
  • request and renewal of materials
  • access to your library account

During this time, we recommend searching for materials using the Quick Topic Search on the Library homepage.

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Congratulations to the Winners of the 2021 Open Student Scholar Prize!

Posted on May 20, 2021 by Amelia Clarkson

In March and April of this year Open Langara and the Library jointly ran the Open Student Scholar Prize for the second time, with great success! The judges were pleasantly surprised to receive almost double the number of submissions from last year, as well as an increase in instructor-nominated projects. Once again it was exciting to see the wide variety of project formats, from multimedia teaching tools to original experiments, the caliber of the work, and the thoughtful statements on Open Education. Prizes were awarded as planned for first, second, and third place, as well as two honourable mentions. All projects can be discovered in the LaIR, Langara’s institutional repository, in the Open Student Scholar Prize collection. Continue reading →

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Library Ezproxy Software Upgrade – April 29, 2021

Posted on April 26, 2021 by Philip Wong

The Library Ezproxy software will be upgraded on April 29, 2021, 7:30 am – 8:30 am.

During this time there will be intermittent interruptions to the access of library online databases and e-resources from off-campus.

If you have any questions please contact Philip Wong (philip.wong@langara.ca), Systems Librarian.

Library Services

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Time to book instruction for Summer 2021!

Posted on April 14, 2021 by Allison Sullivan

While we continue online learning for the summer term, your liaison librarians are still providing information literacy instruction services! They may look a little different than usual, but feel free to reach out to use if you are planning research assignments in the summer term.

You can learn more about our virtual library services and information literacy instruction here:

Some options for online library classes may include:

  • Synchronous session with the librarian over Zoom to offer an interactive information literacy class.
  • Asynchronous learning objects that allow students to walk through the research process that students can watch on their own time.
  • Embed your Library Assignment Guide directly into your Brightspace Course. Instructions on this can be found here:
  • Custom built learning objects that offer subject specific exercises and suggestions for research projects (this will take more lead time)
  • Using the existing online tutorials through Brightspace. More information on that can be found here:
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