LIBR 576: Public Libraries (3) - Course Syllabus
Program: Master of Library and Information Studies
Year: 2014-2015 - Winter Session - Term 1
Course Schedule: Wednesdays 6PM-9PM
Location: Room 185
Instructors: Anne Olsen | Baharak Yousefi
Office location: SLAIS Adjunct Office
Office phone: 604-375-8608 | 778-782-7417
Office hours: By appointment
E-mail address: anne.olsen@vpl.ca | byousefi@sfu.ca
SLAIS Student Portal: http://connect.ubc.ca
Course Goal:
In accordance with the UBC Mission Statement, the overall goal of this course is to enable
students to contribute to the economic, social, and cultural progress of the community by
preparing them for positions of responsibility in public libraries. More specifically, students will
be able to describe general missions and values of public libraries, the environmental changes
affecting those missions, and how those changes affect the current and future management of
public libraries. This course will build on, and complement knowledge obtained in LIBR 560
and LIBR 570.
Course Objectives:
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:
● Describe some of the key factors in the history of municipal and regional public libraries
● Name some traditional commitments/values of the public library and compare and
contrast those to the commitments/values of today’s public library
● Explain the composition and governance responsibilities of both municipal and regional
library boards
● Describe the role of public library legislation and its implementation across Canada
● Describe the various roles assumed by Friends of the Library
● List the various types of in-house statistics that should be used for management
purposes and demonstrate how those statistics can be compared to those gathered at
provincial and national levels.
● Identify the key economic, labour union, and supervisory elements regarding use of
volunteers
● Describe the leadership qualities possessed by effective public library managers
● Describe key considerations in children’s and YA librarianship
Course Topics:
● History of public librarianship
● Library leadership
● Public libraries and democracy
● Governance, legislation, boards
● Unions, foundations, friends
● Children’s and YA librarianship
● Engagement with community
● Library collections and consortia
● Assessment and decision making
● Technology in public libraries
Prerequisites:
MLIS and Dual MAS/MLIS: completion of MLIS core; recommended co-requisite: 504
MAS: completion of MAS core and permission of the SLAIS Graduate Adviser
Course Schedule and Required Readings:
Date
Topic
Required Readings
Sep 3
Introduction to class
and assignments
None
Sep 10
History and current
context of public
libraries
New, W.H. (2002). Libraries. Encyclopedia of
Literature in Canada, 656-660.
Singh, S. (2012). Unpublished paper (available
through Connect)
Ken Roberts: The Future of Libraries
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdxHe4Wc0K
8Ofd717cXJah6hNKmImKge0
Sep 17
Library leadership with
an eye to social justice
and responsibility
Samek, T. (2013). “You can’t hurry love:” Slow library
education in culturally diverse society.” IFLA, World
Library and Information Congress 2013 Paper
Repository.
http://library.ifla.org/98/1/125-samek-en.pdf
Sep 24
Public libraries and
democracy
Budd, J. (2007) Public library leaders and changing
society, Public Library Quarterly, 26:3-4, 1-14, DOI:
10.1300/J118v26n03_01
Oct 1
Governance,
legislation, boards
BC Library Act
https://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/legislation/library_act/
Oct 8
Unions, foundations,
friends
One public library collective agreement.
Examples:
● Vancouver Public Library CUPE 391
http://www.vpl.ca/images/uploads/file/pdf/CA-VPLCUPE-391-2012-2015.pdf
● Burnaby Public Library CUPE 23
http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/labour/Agree
ments/Burnaby_Library-CUPE_23-2007-11.pdf
● Fraser Valley Regional Library CUPE 1698
http://www.lrb.bc.ca/cas/WST5.pdf
Curry, A. (1996) Volunteers in unionized Canadian
public libraries: a finely tuned partnership, Libraries &
Culture, 31:1, 144-158
Oct 15
Children’s librarianship
Kranich, N. (2004). Why filters won't protect children
or adults, Library Administration & Management,
18:1, 14-18.
http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/filtering/whyfil
terswontprotect
Ford, C. (2013). Summer Reading Club: Inviting
accessibility, BCLA Browser, 5:4.
http://bclabrowser.ca/index.php/browser/issue/view/2
8
Oct 22
Youth librarianship
National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH);
Lambda Legal; nn4y; National Center for Lesbian
Rights. (2009). National Recommended Best
Practices for Serving LGBT Homeless Youth. USA.
http://b.3cdn.net/naeh/9edec5bddd88cea03d_yum6b
e7c4.pdf
Oct 29
Community
engagement
Community-Led Libraries Toolkit
http://www.librariesincommunities.ca/resources/Com
munity-Led_Libraries_Toolkit.pdf
Nov 5
Collections and
consortia
Mattern, S. (2014). Library as Infrastructure: Reading
room, social service center, maker-space. How far
can we stretch the public library? Design Observer.
http://places.designobserver.com/feature/library-asinfrastructure/38488/
Nov 12
Technology in public
libraries
Popwich, S. (2014). Hacking and making in the library
community: Access and Code4Lib. Feliciter. 60.1, 1617.
Kosciejew, M. (2013). The era of big data. Feliciter.
59.4, 52-55.
Domsy, C. (2013). Libraries as creative spaces.
Feliciter. 59.2, 28-29.
Kinney, B. (2010). The Internet, public libraries, and
the digital divide. Public Library Quarterly. 29:2, 104161.
Stevenson, S. (2009). Digital divide: a discursive
move away from the real inequities. Information
Society. 25:1, 1-22.
Nov 19
Assessment and
decision making
Canadian Urban Libraries Council Key Performance
Indicators
http://www.culc.ca/kpis/
BC Public Library Statistics
https://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/pls/reports.htm
Nov 26
Cross silo cooperations Kranich, N. (2010). Academic libraries as hubs for
and knowledge sharing deliberative democracy. Journal of Public
Deliberation. 6:1.
http://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol6/iss1/art4
Additional readings may be assigned throughout the term.
Course Assignments, Due dates and Weight in relation to final course mark:
Short assignment
Seminar facilitation
Presentation
Final paper
Class participation
October 8th
Individual dates
Individual dates
Nov 19th
All term
10%
15%
25%
35%
15%
Attendance: The calendar states: “Regular attendance is expected of students in all their
classes (including lectures, laboratories, tutorials, seminars, etc.). Students who neglect their
academic work and assignments may be excluded from the final examinations. Students who
are unavoidably absent because of illness or disability should report to their instructors on
return to classes.”
Evaluation: All assignments will be marked using the evaluative criteria given on the SLAIS
web site.
Written & Spoken English Requirement: Written and spoken work may receive a lower mark
if it is, in the opinion of the instructor, deficient in English.
Access & Diversity: Access & Diversity works with the University to create an inclusive living
and learning environment in which all students can thrive. The University accommodates
students with disabilities who have registered with the Access and Diversity unit:
[http://www.students.ubc.ca/access/drc.cfm]. You must register with the Disability Resource
Centre to be granted special accommodations for any on-going conditions.
Religious Accommodation: The University accommodates students whose religious
obligations conflict with attendance, submitting assignments, or completing scheduled tests
and examinations. Please let your instructor know in advance, preferably in the first week of
class, if you will require any accommodation on these grounds. Students who plan to be
absent for varsity athletics, family obligations, or other similar commitments, cannot assume
they will be accommodated, and should discuss their commitments with the instructor before
the course drop date. UBC policy on Religious Holidays:
http://www.universitycounsel.ubc.ca/policies/policy65.pdf .
Academic Integrity
Plagiarism
The Faculty of Arts considers plagiarism to be the most serious academic offence that a
student can commit. Regardless of whether or not it was committed intentionally, plagiarism
has serious academic consequences and can result in expulsion from the university.
Plagiarism involves the improper use of somebody else's words or ideas in one's work.
It is your responsibility to make sure you fully understand what plagiarism is. Many students
who think they understand plagiarism do in fact commit what UBC calls "reckless plagiarism."
Below is an excerpt on reckless plagiarism from UBC Faculty of Arts' leaflet, "Plagiarism
Avoided: Taking Responsibility for Your Work," (http://www.arts.ubc.ca/artsstudents/plagiarism-avoided.html).
"The bulk of plagiarism falls into this category. Reckless plagiarism is often the result of
careless research, poor time management, and a lack of confidence in your own ability to think
critically. Examples of reckless plagiarism include:
● Taking phrases, sentences, paragraphs, or statistical findings from a variety of sources and
piecing them together into an essay (piecemeal plagiarism);
● Taking the words of another author and failing to note clearly that they are not your own. In
other words, you have not put a direct quotation within quotation marks;
● Using statistical findings without acknowledging your source;
● Taking another author's idea, without your own critical analysis, and failing to acknowledge
that this idea is not yours;
● Paraphrasing (i.e. rewording or rearranging words so that your work resembles, but does
not copy, the original) without acknowledging your source;
● Using footnotes or material quoted in other sources as if they were the results of your own
research; and
● Submitting a piece of work with inaccurate text references, sloppy footnotes, or incomplete
source (bibliographic) information."
Bear in mind that this is only one example of the different forms of plagiarism. Before preparing
for their written assignments, students are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with
the following source on plagiarism: the Academic Integrity Resource Centre
http://help.library.ubc.ca/researching/academic-integrity. Additional information is available on
the SAIS Student Portal http://connect.ubc.ca.
If after reading these materials you still are unsure about how to properly use sources in your
work, please ask me for clarification.
Students are held responsible for knowing and following all University regulations regarding
academic dishonesty. If a student does not know how to properly cite a source or what
constitutes proper use of a source it is the student's personal responsibility to obtain the
needed information and to apply it within University guidelines and policies. If evidence of
academic dishonesty is found in a course assignment, previously submitted work in this course
may be reviewed for possible academic dishonesty and grades modified as appropriate. UBC
policy requires that all suspected cases of academic dishonesty must be forwarded to the
Dean for possible action.
Other Course Policies as Relevant
Students are expected to attend all classes. We understand there may be extenuating
circumstances that arise preventing attendance at a particular class. Students are expected to
report absences to one or both instructors prior to the class. More than one absence or any
unapproved absence will have an impact on the student’s participation grade.
All assignments must be submitted to Connect before midnight on the due date. Requests for
extension must be agreed to by both instructors prior to the due date; extensions will be
granted at the discretion of the instructors based on the particular circumstances discussed.