The Staff Room

Guess what we got into the office? The printer’s proof of...

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 09:22:32 -0400

Guess what we got into the office? The printer’s proof of the Super Conference 2013 registration program! Look for it to hit your mailboxes late October/early November.

We had a couple special visitors in the office today, Michelle...

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 16:16:55 -0400

We had a couple special visitors in the office today, Michelle with Baby Simone!

Just a little Forest of Reading cleanup in the office…...

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:27:02 -0400

Just a little Forest of Reading cleanup in the office… Check out the before and after book piles!

Meet Sandra Dimock, our new education program coordinator while...

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:49:00 -0400

Meet Sandra Dimock, our new education program coordinator while Michelle is on mat leave. To get to know her better, we’ve asked her to fill out this questionnaire.

Welcome, Sandra! We’re happy to have you on board.

What did you do before joining OLA?
I was a secondary teacher for a long time with the Toronto District School Board. I have 7 teaching subjects and experience teaching them all, mainly teaching adults, but also teenagers I was also a Library Department Head at 3 different schools so I learned about every aspect of running a library.

What’s your favourite part of your job?
My favourite part of the job is meeting so many talented individuals associated with the OLA and also learning from the webinars that I help put into production.

What do you like doing for fun outside the office?
I like to keep active — biking, running, walking along the Grand River. I am also learning to play tennis right now though I am very bad at it. I also love to have friends over for dinner and experimenting with my extremely varied range of cookbooks— sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. Luckily my friends are forgiving.

What’s your party trick?
I wouldn’t consider it a trick, but at parties I tend to zero in on one or two people and ask questions that are really none of my business — maybe it comes from my counseling background.

What was your favourite book growing up?
I can’t say I had a favourite book because I read all the time. When I was very young, I used to choose books for their weight — the bigger the better so I tended to read a lot of anthologies early on and books that I really had no business reading — it was pretty indiscriminate.

Who are your heroes?
I value taking the ‘road less travelled’ and people who are original thinkers and intrepid explorers so Margaret Mead, Copernicus, Ferdinand Magellan, Sartre, Einstein, existential philosophers, to name a few.

Which actor/actress would you cast to play you in the movie of your life?
My life has been full of so many different chapters and shifts that I’d have to say someone like Meryl Streep as she can play different dimensions and maybe make my life seem more exciting than it actually was!

Which OLA event are you most excited for in the year ahead?
Well, the Super Conference next year, I’d say and also the Virtual Component of that — really looking forward to helping to put that together! Should be awesome!

Super cool! Extra OLA Super Conference delegate bags, sponsored...

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 10:17:16 -0400

Super cool! Extra OLA Super Conference delegate bags, sponsored by Brodart, become loot/book bags in Mbooni District thanks to Eric Walters, OLA Forest of Reading award winning author. Visit www.creationofhope.com for more information about this initiative in Kenya.

Claire hanging out with the amazing Fausta from Bolton, the...

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 16:32:17 -0400

Claire hanging out with the amazing Fausta from Bolton, the winner of our Forest of Reading biggest fan competition.

We’re at the CLA conference on the expo floor! We’ll...

Wed, 30 May 2012 19:03:44 -0400

We’re at the CLA conference on the expo floor! We’ll be here until Friday, so swing by if you’re in Ottawa.

Scenes from the Festival of Trees in Thunder Bay! 1. The packed...

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:38:17 -0400

Scenes from the Festival of Trees in Thunder Bay!

1. The packed venue

2. Author Kevin Sylvester hypes the crowd

3. Program Coordinator Meredith Tutching meets Smokey the Bear

OTTAWA FESTIVAL OF TREES Bill Slavin, illustrator of All...

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:26:00 -0400

Bill Slavin

Romi Caron

Natalie Hyde

OTTAWA FESTIVAL OF TREES

Bill Slavin, illustrator of All Aboard!; Romi Caron, illustrator of Uumajut; and Natalie Hyde, author of Saving Arm Pit, speak to more than 900 young readers at the Ottawa Festival of Trees May 17.

OTTAWA FESTIVAL OF TREES Susan J. Nilson, author of Dear George...

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:17:28 -0400

Susan J. Nilson

Jill MacLean

Simon Awa

OTTAWA FESTIVAL OF TREES

Susan J. Nilson, author of Dear George Clooney, Please Marry My Mom; Jill MacLean, author of Home Truths, and Simon Awa, co-author of Uumajut, speak at the Festival of Trees Celebration in Ottawa May 17.

THE GARGOYLE AT THE FESTIVAL Philippa Dowding, author of The...

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:09:47 -0400

THE GARGOYLE AT THE FESTIVAL

Philippa Dowding, author of The Gargoyle Overhead, brings along her pet gargoyle to the Ottawa Festival of Trees.

DANCERS AT THE OTTAWA FESTIVAL OF TREES Candice McCutcheon...

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:06:47 -0400

DANCERS AT THE OTTAWA FESTIVAL OF TREES

Candice McCutcheon (left) and Abby Ambrose of the Canterbury High School Dance Company leap through the air while performing at the Ottawa Festival of Trees May 17.

OTTAWA FESTIVAL OF TREES Spoken Word Poet Nathanael Larochette...

Thu, 17 May 2012 11:59:00 -0400

OTTAWA FESTIVAL OF TREES

Spoken Word Poet Nathanael Larochette MC’s the Ottawa Festival of Trees, with more than 900 young readers in attendance at Carleton University in Ottawa.

OTTAWA FESTIVAL OF TREES Illustrator Romi Caron and Author Anna...

Thu, 17 May 2012 11:54:00 -0400

OTTAWA FESTIVAL OF TREES

Illustrator Romi Caron and Author Anna Ziegler with their book Uumajut at the Festival of Trees celebrations in Ottawa May 17.

What it takes to make the Festival of Trees happen! OLA staffers...

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:53:09 -0400

What it takes to make the Festival of Trees happen! OLA staffers loaded up the van this afternoon. Can’t wait to see all of our excited readers at Harbourfront Centre tomorrow and Wednesday! For more Festival info, follow this link: http://bit.ly/JR6Qxx

The staff gets a rundown of the latest version of our new staff...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:08:04 -0400

The staff gets a rundown of the latest version of our new staff database. It’s exciting to learn about all the new ways we’ll be able to interact with our members.

Is your membership up to date? You can renew it here: http://bit.ly/I6evZy

"People support libraries, but sometimes don’t understand that it takes people to make them run. Just..."

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:10:44 -0400

“People support libraries, but sometimes don’t understand that it takes people to make them run. Just as it takes writers to write new books.”

- Margaret Atwood, champion of library workers. Atwood weighs in on the TPL strike in today’s Globe and Mail. Link here: http://bit.ly/GTZt6F

Pass it on the any design or fine arts students you know! More...

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:38:30 -0400

Pass it on the any design or fine arts students you know! More info can be found by clicking on the following link: http://bit.ly/vefFI1

We love hearing from librarians about what they learned at Super...

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:05:57 -0500

We love hearing from librarians about what they learned at Super Conference - and we LOVE LOVE LOVE how the University of Guelph librarians share their insights and lessons learned. Thanks to superstars Robin and MJ for pulling this together :)

The OLA is very proud to support Cooperative Education initiatives. Our current coop student, Ali...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:14:14 -0500

The OLA is very proud to support Cooperative Education initiatives. Our current coop student, Ali Essop, has been with us since September and experienced all the preparation that goes into Super Conference. Here is his view on the final product.

The OLA Super Conference at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre is the largest conference for librarians in Canada. The conference takes place once a year from at the beginning of February and librarians from all over Ontario and Canada show up. This year, the theme was ‘Innovation’ and the conference had a number of sessions and speakers each day. There were tons of vendors from different companies showcasing their books and new products like e-readers and new library software at the expo.

As a student enrolled in the coop program at Danforth Collegiate & Technical Institute, attending my placement here at the OLA, I can say that there was a lot of preparation and work put into the conference months in advance. As a student, I could get a good idea on what was most likely going to happen and what the conference would be about, because of the hype and the talk by the staff here. I assumed that it was going to be boring old books and librarians and people handing out pamphlets, nothing really interesting, yet I went in optimistic, and for the most part that’s what it was, until Suzanne told me to walk around and take everything in. I thought to myself at least I’m missing math since I’ll be here all day, but, as it turned out, things got more interesting as soon as I started talking to exhibitors and people who were showcasing their products, like Carr Mclean, and Infogroup, and I got more interested. When I saw teachers from my school at the expo I got a sense of how huge the Super Conference is. Talking to people and vendors I got a better attitude because I brought up subjects of interest with some of the vendors, picking up informational books and engaging in a somewhat lengthy conversation, contrasting what the book says and what I’ve learned in school, like on finance and history, etc. Walking around for 7 hours was the tiresome part and before I left I promised I would go to one of the speakers sessions. I ended up going to Jonah Lehrer’s session. Jonah Lehrer is a neuroscientist and he mixes sports, psychology, war, and politics into human decision-making. He was on the Colbert Report and has written books—Imagine, How We Decide, and Proust was a Neuroscientist. I didn’t know what to expect really, but upon listening he brought up some interesting topics that got me intrigued.

There was this topic he brought up about ‘true grit’. Now you may think it’s just an expression but it’s also a reflex in the mind that targets reactive decisions and performance over a long period of time. Lehrer says that ‘Grit’ can be measured. He gave an example of a quarterback in football where players show ‘Grit’ not in public but when no one else is around, and coaches need to find a way to test how someone is going to play the entire season, therefore they will need to factor in grit. He says “ In order to become a professional athlete, you need a certain kind of obsessiveness. You’ve got to devote your life to the development of this very narrow expertise. It shouldn’t be surprising that this takes a lot of ‘grit’. Now I hope I worded it properly to make sense, but when he was explaining this to he audience I thought it was extremely interesting, and kind of gave me a sense of what to do when I want to achieve a goal. Another topic he brought up was ‘A Moment of Insight’, which is kind of like when you have a thought in the head, like the kind of type you say ‘Eureka’ to. The type of thought or idea that comes up when something hits you on the head or a light bulb goes of in your head. “It is one of those defining features in the human brain yet we have no idea how or why it happens.” Lehrer says that it usually happens when we’ve stopped searching for that certain idea and then when your mind is on something else or just relaxed this idea pops up. He gave an example of a singer (I wish I remembered who this singer was) who suddenly gave up on his career. The singer retreated up north to his cottage from his exhausting career and he was so set on this idea of retiring that he didn’t even bring his guitar with him. One day, when he was relaxed in the bathtub, he started randomly coming up with lyrics for a song. Shortly after, he went back to becoming a singer and released that song. I thought that was a great example and it has happened to me countless times before, where I would stop doing something and all of a sudden the most brilliant idea spontaneously pops up in my head.

Definitely this session was my favorite part of the OLA Super Conference. Each year they have multiple interesting speakers on a whole variety of topics they talk about. Overall, I found the Super Conference an enjoyable experience and despite my first impressions, it was fun and I highly recommend going to these shows. You learn a lot of new fascinating things, and see tons of new projects and inventions. Months of preparation were put into the OLA Super Conference and it is for sure worth it. Definitely come next year!