News

• Who’s behind the Ask Us desk

  Thursday, September 12, 2024 | By Amanda Emery

  

  The Ask Us desk is your main stop in the Matheson Learning Commons, and is staffed by the User Services & Engagement department. Services at the desk include retrieving course reserves, borrowing resources, lending wellness items, and much more.

  There are several teams working behind the scenes:

  • Course Readings; we help you with access to high-demand course materials in a variety of formats at no cost to students.
  • Engagement and Outreach; we connect you to library resources through events, displays, and partnerships.
  • Interlibrary Loan; we support your borrowing requests by sourcing items from other libraries around the world.

  Learn more about how we can help you by visiting the Use the Library page.

  Tags: display, Events, Faculty, Services, Students, Virtual Book Display, Wellness
  Categories: Learning Commons, Main

• MDGL is Open!

  Tuesday, September 03, 2024 | By sjanzen

  

  The Map, Data & GIS Library (MDGL) would like to welcome back the Brock community for the academic year 2024-2025! After being open By Appointment Only, we will return to our regular working hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. The MDGL will remain closed for weekends, holidays and intercession.  Reading Week hours will be By Appointment Only.

  Email [email protected] for more information.

  The MDGL offers study space, computers, knowledgeable and friendly staff to assist with finding and using our cartographic collections including maps, atlases, books, digital air photos and more! We look forward to serving you.

  Welcome back, Badgers!!!

  Tags: MDGL, Our Spaces, Services
  Categories: Main, MDGL

• Brock Library Now and Then

  Sunday, August 25, 2024 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  As part of Brock University’s 60th anniversary celebrations, we present Brock Library Now and Then, a treasure trove of photos showing the development of the Brock University Library and the generations of students who studied here.

  Reminisce in-person by scanning the QR codes located on posters in the Matheson Learning Commons (main floor or the Library), Floor 5, and in the Map, Data, & GIS Library. For those unable to visit in person, navigate to Brock Library Now and Then exhibit online.

  Most of the images are from the University photo collection held in the Archives and Special Collections. We thank Archives staff for their contributions to this exhibit, and invite you to delve further into Brock University history and lore at the Pop-Up Archives event during this year’s very special Homecoming Skyline Celebration.

  Tags: Archives and Special Collections, Brock 60th, display, Our Collections
  Categories: Featured Collections, Learning Commons

• Welcome Autumn, and the Wellness Book Club

  Wednesday, August 21, 2024 | By jcotton

  

  Do you love to hear what others have read and loved?

  Are you bursting with excitement to share the book that enthralled you this summer?

  Do you need some inspiration to read for fun (and reap the benefits!)?

  This is your opportunity to try out a new kind of book club! The Wellness Book Club is returning this fall with a new spin…instead of reading the same book, you are invited to bring along a book you recommend and tell us why you loved it.

  Join Teaching & Learning Librarian, Justine, for a gathering this fall – bring your coffee/tea and let’s chat about books. Participants will also have the opportunity to be part of a research study about the effects of recreational reading on stress levels in university students.

  Sign up here: bit.ly/autumn2024bookclub

  We will meet in October and November – dates will be announced soon.

  Tags: Book Club, Events, Students, Wellness
  Categories: Learning Commons, Main

• Dark Tourism

  Tuesday, July 30, 2024 | By Amanda Emery

  

  Our August Featured Collection delves into the darker side of tourism, exploring why people choose to visit places associated with tragedy, death, or disaster. “Dark Tourism” is a long-time practice and some scholars describe it as an opportunity to engage with history and gather a deeper understanding of events that occurred in specific locations.

  Read about the preservation of cultural and natural heritage in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where Ukraine is transforming the site into a tourism attraction. Consider the term social memory and explore collective remembrance of the Holocaust through the visitation of Holocaust memorials and museums.

  These books cover a variety of sites such as: Fukushima, war memorials, concentration camps, catacombs, penitentiaries, and natural disaster sites like Pompeii.

  You can browse the collection by visiting the display next to the Ask Us desk or view the e-books online.

  Tags: display, Our Collections, Virtual Book Display
  Categories: Featured Collections, Learning Commons

• Olympic & Paralympic Games 2024

  Wednesday, July 24, 2024 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  As thousands of athletes gather to compete in Paris this week, Brock Library presents an extra thematic collection this month: 2024 Olympics. Featuring print and e-book titles as well as Olympic and sport-related films, the collection takes an inter-disciplinary approach to the world-wide sporting extravaganza.

  Of note: The Olympic Sports Economy and Circus Maximus consider the economic impacts of mega sporting events on host countries.

  Individual athletes are profiled in titles such as Playing the Long Game by Canadian soccer star Christine Sinclair, and The Greatest Athlete (You’ve Never Heard of): Canada’s First Olympic Gold Medalist, George Washington Orton.

  The 2024 Olympics featured collection is accompanied by a display of Olympic trivia and posters at the Thistle entrance to the Learning Commons.

  Browse, borrow and enjoy in between catching your favourite events.

  Tags: display, Our Collections, Virtual Book Display
  Categories: Featured Collections, Learning Commons

• Career Opportunity, Library Leadership Team

  Wednesday, July 10, 2024 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  Brock University Library invites applications for the full-time, permanent position of Associate University Librarian (AUL), Research.

  As a member of a collaborative senior library leadership team, the AUL Research will work closely with the University Librarian, other colleagues in the Library, and the wider university community to provide creative leadership in the development and implementation of the Library’s strategic priorities and objectives.

  Direct reports currently include the heads of the Collections Services, Archives & Special Collections, and the Research Lifecyle departments. The portfolio of this AUL includes leadership in the strategic development and delivery of the Library’s services advancing research at Brock including:

  • Collections Services, such as collection development, acquisitions, content management.
  • Archives & Special Collections, such as print and digital preservation, collection development & acquisitions, relationship management.
  • Research Lifecycle, such as scholarly communications, research metrics, persistent identifiers, data management, and digital scholarship.

  Learn more about the role, qualifications, etc. and apply by August 26, 2024 at 12:01 am.

  Tags: Employment opportunity
  Categories: Main

• Canadian Reads

  Tuesday, July 02, 2024 | By Amanda Emery

  

  Explore July’s curated collection of books and e-books, Canadian Reads, and delve into the print world of Canadiana.

  Looking for a Canadian award-winning fiction to read? The collection includes:

  • Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein, the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner.
  • The Future by Catherine Leroux, the 2024 Canada Reads winner.
  • Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton, the 2023 Canada Reads winner.
  • Many other titles from the shortlist of both the Scotiabank Giller Prize and Canada Reads.

  Interested in educating yourself on contemporary issues in Canada? Try some of these reads:

  • Look into the desperate need for access to safe drinking water in Indigenous and rural communities in Canada.
  • Read about the history of reproductive justice in Canada.
  • Learn about small town Ontario as a popular literary trop in fiction.

  Browse the collection by visiting the display next to the Ask Us desk or view the e-books online.

  Tags: display, Our Collections, Virtual Book Display
  Categories: Featured Collections, Learning Commons

• Disability Pride Month

  Thursday, June 27, 2024 | By Evelyn Smith

  

  July is Disability Pride Month.

  Take some time to explore this collection of titles in the fields of Mad Studies and Critical Disability Studies. Both fields have been instrumental in advancing the voices and knowledges of Mad and disabled persons to enact transformative change.

  “Disability is not only an identity, but also a community with a diverse culture all their own to be proud of and celebrated. Disability culture is about visibility and self-value. Disability Pride Month is a time for recognizing these facts and listening to people with disabilities.”

  From Ontario’s Bill 128 – “Disability Pride Month Act, 2023”

  Tags: Our Collections, Virtual Book Display
  Categories: Featured Collections, Learning Commons

• Collections update: budget planning for 2024-2025

  Wednesday, June 26, 2024 | By mrettig

  

  As Brock community members will be aware, the university underwent an intensive budget mitigation exercise in order to reduce the operating deficit for the fiscal year 2024-2025. As a result, the Library acquisitions budget was frozen at the 2023-2024 level ($5.75 million): We did not receive the inflationary protection increase as we have in previous years. For context, annual inflationary protection in the acquisitions budget (~2-3% increase) has historically aimed to sustain the library collection.

  Structural Challenges: Annual Subscription Increases

  In planning for the coming year, the Library must account for standard annual subscription price increases from publishers and vendors. These increases can range from zero to over twelve percent.

  Subscriptions constitute the majority of our annual spending (see Figure 1). As a result, recurring pressure in the form of annual increases can have an outsized impact on the overall picture.

  

  Figure 1: The 2024 Library acquisitions budget is $5,745,000. Subscriptions account for 75% of the total, books: 19%, and infrastructure: 6%

  As terms come up for renewal, we are negotiating to keep increases as low as possible – but a frozen acquisitions budget means we need to find savings to absorb anticipated price increases.  

  Structural Challenges: The ‘Big Deal’

  The prominent business model for most publicly funded research is the profit-driven, highly consolidated scholarly publishing industry. Publishers gain the rights to the work of academics and then sell the research back to university libraries with steep profit margins.  

  The major publishers bundle their catalogue of journal subscriptions into large, expensive packages, known as “Big Deals”. Brock University Library subscribes to all five major scientific journal Big Deals: Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Springer, and Sage. 

  Over the last decade, academic libraries worldwide have been responding to the combination of budgetary pressures and a broken, exclusionary publishing system by closely assessing and sometimes cancelling some of their Big Deals.  A non-comprehensive list of “Big Deal” journal cancellations can be found on SPARC’s website: Big Deal Cancellation Tracking – SPARC (sparcopen.org) 

  Summer 2024 Assessment Project

  The Library is currently focused on an assessment project, reviewing our current usage and spending patterns to find savings. The assessment team includes librarians and staff from the Collections Services department, led by the Head of Collections Services.

  Project Principles:

  1. Ensure any cuts are distributed: Not overly harming a single discipline.
  2. Evidence-based. Collect usage data to inform decisions. 
  3. Assess high-cost materials. Evaluate Cost Per Use/value for money.
  4. Balance with qualitative data. Consider Brock’s unique programs and strategic directions.
  5. Consider what work the library can reasonably absorb: Cuts are not labour-neutral & typically remove efficiencies. 

  Communication

  In April 2024, the Library presented information about the acquisitions budget and collections assessment to various stakeholders, including Research & Scholarship Policy Committee, Teaching & Learning Policy Committee, Research Strategy Operations Group, Library Representatives Meeting, and the Associate Deans Meeting. Library budget planning was also presented at the February meeting of the Planning Priorities and Budget Advisory Committee. 

  Further communication efforts will include keeping this webpage updated with project developments and additional information sessions in the fall. 

  You are welcome to contact us with questions or concerns. 

  Monica Rettig, Acting Associate University Librarian Research [email protected]  

  Alicia Zorzetto, Head Collections Services [email protected]  

  Tags: Budget, Collections, Research
  Categories: Collections, Main