The Langara Library team is comitted to customer service, continuous learning, effective communication, collaboration, and ongoing service evaluation. Strong leadership complements highly skilled and motivated employees working as teams.
A selection of kudos received by library staff from students and faculty throughout the year:
I'm so grateful for your time, energy, and support!
Thank you again for speaking with our students. I feel your presentation is of great benefit to their success at Langara.
I wanted to say thank you for the lecture – I just got my annotated bibliography back and I got 5/5. I’m headed into the final paper now and I have all my sources ready.
Thank you for all you’ve done for me this semester and my previous ones. You make my and all other students' lives easier.
The support you provide me and my students is invaluable. I really appreciate it.
While the Library's team meetings often focus on concrete actionable items, the Library also uses staff meetings as opportunities to consider past successes and challenges with an eye to longer term planning. With the Library’s current strategic plan ending in 2020, the team has begun taking steps toward the development of a new strategic plan. On April 17, 2019, the team gathered for a session facilitated by external consultants from Emotus Operandi to review past successes and begin to determine the Library’s direction in the coming years.
The Library gathered in November 2019 for its annual staff professional development and planning event. In addition to reviewing the Library's emergency procedures in the aftermath of the April 1 T Building fire, staff members also provided brief area reports and updates. Speakers from various College departments, including Student Conduct and Judicial Affairs, IT Cybersecurity, Office of Academic Quality Assurance, Langara's Mental Health Initiatives Consultant, and the Teaching and Curriculum Development Centre presented on the latest initiatives around campus.
Annie Jensen returned from parental leave in October and resumed her position as Media Librarian. Mia Clarkson, Annie’s leave replacement, transitioned to a contract position as Langara’s Open Education Librarian through March 2020.
In September 2019, the Library hired Emily Guerrero and Alyssa Hamer, and welcomed back a familiar face in Judy Kornfeld, to fill the Library's auxiliary librarian vacancies. Auxiliary librarians provide reference services and work on library projects, typically on weeknights and weekends. Congratulations to Joe Haigh, one of our long-serving Auxiliary Librarians, who moved on to a librarian position with Columbia College.
Barry Favero joined the Borrower Services team in May 2019. Barry is an alumnus of Langara's Library Technician program.
Patricia Cia completed her term as the Vice-Chair/Chair of the BC Electronic Library Network (BC ELN) Steering Committee. Patricia has agreed to serve as the President-Elect for the Special Libraries Association - Canada. Alli Sullivan served as Chair of the BC Academic Libraries Section. Lindsay Tripp was elected as the Chair-Elect for the BC Open Education Librarians Group.
Throughout the year, library staff attended, organized, or participated in numerous professional development events, including:
As part of the Library's November 2018 all staff planning meeting, the team identified developing intercultural competencies among library staff as an organizational priority and an Intercultural Working Group was formed. Resulting from this working group's guidance and advocacy, staff members completed the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), a tool that assesses intercultural competencies and identifies areas for growth. Staff members that completed the inventory also attended group and individual debrief sessions with the College's IDI administrators.
The Intercultural Working Group also formed a reading club, during which staff members read and discussed Pulling Together: A Guide for Front-Line Staff, Student Services, and Advisors.