So much has been written about ebooks: it’s hard to keep track! For a change let’s look at ebooks from a very different light – not the budgeting and licensing challenges, not the access problems, not the integration issues that we all face in our daily lives. Let’s take a more conceptual and cultural approach. How are ebooks viewed by scholars and other professionals who are facing a sea change in research and scholarship?

One essential characteristic of projects in the digital humanities is collaboration. As an already multi-disciplinary field, it is inevitable that humanists from a variety of disciplines would work in partnership on projects employing digital tools and emerging technologies. The creation and implementation of ap- plications can’t and shouldn’t be done alone. Humanists can collaborate with programming-savvy colleagues, IT departments, and computer scientists to create new and exciting textual representations and information resources. The collaborative relationship between humanities scholars and programmers is imperative too because, without the other, there is something lost in the end result. Each party learns from the other in the process of creating.

In today's fast-paced culture where people are always running to somewhere or expecting instant answers of the 2.0 world, how can you provide readers' advisory to people who do not have the time to wait for well-thought-out suggestions?

In small communities there are barriers to access to consumer health information that have nothing to do with availability. When library staff are known by users not only as information workers, but also as friends or neighbours, there can be reluctance on the part of users to ask for information on a subject that patrons may well regard as being intensely personal. A man in his 70s who’s just been diagnosed with prostate cancer may be unwilling to ask at the library for information due to concern that news of his illness may be all over town within a few days. A woman with recurrent urinary tract infections may feel uncomfortable talking to others about it, including her local librarian. But patients who are not comfortable with the internet, or who aren’t aware of how to effectively search for information or support, need our help. How do we overcome this barrier of familiarity to get them the assistance they need?

Dear OLA Members,

I wish to extend my deep appreciation for your continued commitment to the OLA community. OLA is a wonderful and vibrant organization that is a credit to you, its members, who give of your time through myriad voluntary contributions, your energy, your passion and your expertise.

At this time of year, when many people look to all the things for which they are thankful, I would like to thank you for being a member of the Ontario Library Association. Thank you for sharing your experience and expertise through the Library Networking Group and through our many programs. You are contributing to the richness and diversity of everything we do in libraries.
 
All of us at OLA wish you and yours the best of holiday seasons.

Research has consistently shown that in schools where the teacher-librarian and the classroom teacher collaborate to design, teach, and assess learning experiences, student test scores are consistently higher. Yet, we all know that effective means of teacher partnering remain ellusive. What are the persistent challenges and what can be done to overcome them? Here are some thoughts.

The stereotype of the comics creator is of an individual toiling alone at his or her work. While much of the work of comic creation remains a solitary endeavour, what libraries do to get the creations into the hands of readers is more collaborative than ever before. Through promotion, reviews, articles, presentations, and even word of mouth, librarians are working together to get the best comic literature into the hands of our patrons.

Anyone who works with readers has the best of intentions, eager to get the right book into the hands of the right reader; however the best readers’ advisors know that good intentions will take them only so far. The process of connecting book and reader is complex and it can seem like the more you know, the more you realize what you don’t know.

To ensure consistent and successful reader interactions, four areas of competency stand out:  the reader’s advisory conversation, collection knowledge, reader service skills, and reader development. So what does it take to be a skilled Reader's Advisor?

And how did you spend your summer? This account of a library school student's introduction to our world last summer is a dream not only for students. Here is a fresh view of the richness of libraries and the excitement of the stewardship of which we are all a part.