Resource Description and Access is the new content standard coming Spring 2013, with national libraries using RDA effective March 30, 2013. Libraries need to address training for staff in all departments on how to interpret, catalogue and use RDA records.
Carleton University and Algonquin College are collaborating on the development of a new joint degree program, the Bachelor of Information Technology - Information Resource Management (BIT-IRM). This unique 4 year program will enable students to graduate with both a Bachelor of Information Technology degree and a Library and Information Technician diploma. Poster presented at the Canadian Library Association Conference in 2014.
Overview of a project to establish an internship for library technicians at Carleton University Library. Poster presented at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference January 2012.
Poster presentation “Graduate students and copyright: informing graduate students about copyright issues in relation to their thesis” by Emma Cross given at the Canadian ETD and Open Repositories Workshop held May 10-11, 2010 at Carleton University. Poster describes a project to promote awareness of copyright issues amongst graduate students at Carleton University Library and the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research.
Within the past decade, academic libraries have seen a shift in purchasing from mostly print to mostly electronic. Although Carleton University Library (Ottawa, Canada) has experienced this shift, it had continued until recently to work within the confines of an organizational structure based on a print purchasing model. This paper will describe in detail the restructuring of the Library's collections and technical services departments to better meet growing electronic demands. Changes included dedicating more staff from print resources to e-resources, changing a librarian position to focus specifically on collections assessment, and shifting budgets to manage growing e-resources more efficiently. The authors will explore accomplishments and hurdles that needed to be overcome, cite lessons learned in making organizational shifts, and make some cautious predictions about future changes.
The purpose of this study was to explore the question of why women are still so underrepresented in Canadian federal politics and specifically within the Canadian House of Commons despite advances in representation in many other fields. To answer this question a study was conducted using qualitative data obtained from interviews with 17 female Members of the 42nd Parliament of Canada between October 2018 to April 2019. Data collected through these interviews was analyzed qualitatively using a combination of content and discourse analysis to summarize, categorize, and investigate the verbal, written, and behavioural data that was obtained. Findings from this study mostly confirm the findings of previous research with a few key exceptions. New findings from this study include that a more nuanced relationship exists between female MP’s and the media than previously thought; that most of the women who run for office at the federal level have very little or no knowledge of the nomination, candidate, and electoral process before they start; and that a toxic work place culture exists within the House of Commons and this negatively impacts the experience that female MP’s have and is one of the reasons women are more likely to have shorter political terms and leave politics after shorter amounts of time when compared to their male counterparts.
In temperate regions, there are clear indications that spring flowering plants are flowering earlier due to rising temperatures of contemporary climate change. Temperatures in temperate regions are rising predominantly in spring. However, Arctic regions are seeing unprecedented temperature increases, predominantly towards the end of the growing season. We might, therefore, expect to see earlier flowering of later-season flowering Arctic plants. Parks Canada has been monitoring purple saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolia) and mountain avens (Dryas integrifolia) flowering and fruiting times for 20 years at Tanquary Fiord, Qut- tinirpaaq National Park, Ellesmere Island. Saxifraga oppositifolia flowers in early spring, while D. integrifolia flowers in midsummer. Over the 20-year period, Tanquary Fiord’s annual and late-summer temperatures have risen significantly. During the same timeframe, D. integrifolia showed a trend towards earlier flowering and fruiting, but S. oppositifolia showed no changes in flowering or fruiting time. Flowering time was related to monthly temperatures just prior to flowering. The number of flowers produced was related to the previous autumn’s monthly temperatures. We found no relationship between flowering time and snowmelt date. Our findings suggest that Arctic community level ecological effects from climate change induced phenology changes will differ from those in temperate regions.
Random Forest (RF) is a widely used algorithm for classification of remotely sensed data. Through a case study in peatland classification using LiDAR derivatives, we present an analysis of the effects of input data characteristics on RF classifications (including RF out-of-bag error, independent classification accuracy and class proportion error). Training data selection and specific input variables (i.e., image channels) have a large impact on the overall accuracy of the image classification. High-dimension datasets should be reduced so that only uncorrelated important variables are used in classifications. Despite the fact that RF is an ensemble approach, independent error assessments should be used to evaluate RF results, and iterative classifications are recommended to assess the stability of predicted classes. Results are also shown to be highly sensitive to the size of the training data set. In addition to being as large as possible, the training data sets used in RF classification should also be (a) randomly distributed or created in a manner that allows for the class proportions of the training data to be representative of actual class proportions in the landscape; and (b) should have minimal spatial autocorrelation to improve classification results and to mitigate inflated estimates of RF out-of-bag classification accuracy.
This article presents the results of the first phase of a research project on perceptions of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IBDP) in Canadian universities. Establishing explicit university recognition policies for IBDP students has been an ongoing task for the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), which conducted two studies on university perceptions of the IBDP in the UK (2003) and Australia/New Zealand (2007). The present study replicates these studies in the Canadian context, to discover how admissions officers in Ontario universities perceive the IBDP in relation to other curricula. Preliminary results reveal a high degree of uniformity in responses, consistent with the previous studies. The IBO is indicated as being the primary source of information, suggesting that it plays an important part in forming perceptions of the IBDP.
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease affecting the nigrostriatal pathway, where patients do not manifest motor symptoms until >50% of neurons are lost. Thus, it is of great importance to determine early neuronal changes that may contribute to disease progression. Recent attention has focused on lipids and their role in pro- and anti-apoptotic processes. However, information regarding the lipid alterations in animal models of PD is lacking. In this study, we utilized high performance liquid chromatography electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-MS/MS) and novel HPLC solvent methodology to profile phosphatidylcholines and sphingolipids within the substantia nigra. The ipsilateral substantia nigra pars compacta was collected from rats 21 days after an infusion of 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA), or vehicle into the anterior dorsal striatum. We identified 115 lipid species from their mass/charge ratio using the LMAPS Lipid MS Predict Database. Of these, 19 lipid species (from phosphatidylcholine and lysophosphotidylcholine lipid classes) were significantly altered by 6-OHDA, with most being down-regulated. The two lipid species that were up-regulated were LPC (16:0) and LPC (18:1), which are important for neuroinflammatory signalling. These findings provide a first step in the characterization of lipid changes in early stages of PD-like pathology and could provide novel targets for early interventions in PD.