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![]() Audrey Mo wins Barbara Wells Award for volunteer serviceAudrey Mo was awarded the 2023 Barbara Wells Award in recognition of her service and commitment to Carleton’s annual United Way Campaign! Since joining the Library, Audrey has played an essential role in organizing, promoting and running several key fundraising events for the United Way campaign. In 2020, undeterred by the pandemic, Audrey put the Puzzle and Games Sale online, successfully raising funds while giving many the chance to discover and enjoy new puzzles before the holidays. She then took over responsibility for the Used Book Sale and worked tirelessly alongside her team of volunteers, providing everyone with the guidance and support they needed to make the event a success. The success of Carleton’s fundraising campaign is the result of the contributions of every person who volunteers their time and energy to help. That it is a collective effort in no way diminishes the impact that individuals like Audrey can have in bringing people together and proving the leadership and inspiration needed for us to reach our goals. ![]() Audrey Mo with Amber Lannon, University Librarian. Library staff recognized for Carleton-wide contributions Congratulations to our Library teams and colleagues who were nominated for the 2023 Service Excellence Awards. These annual awards recognize the outstanding contributions that faculty and staff make at Carleton University each day. This year the entire Library team was nominated for a Service Excellence award, a testament to the positive impact made on the Carleton community. Ed Bilodeau and Sarah Simpkin were also part of an Innovative Change Initiative team nomination for their work with the Experiential Learning Hub. We also want to congratulate the Carleton Therapy Dog Program for their Service Excellence Award. They have been visiting the Library all year helping our students in their gentle and supportive ways. Congratulations to our individual nominees this year:
Professional Achievement Award winners The Library’s Aleksandra Blake and David Jackson were recipients of the 2024 Professional Achievement Award, presented annually to recognize the research and teaching distinction of Carleton’s academic staff. As part of the selection process for this award, recommendations were made by the Peer Evaluation Committee to the University Librarian. The Committee looked for exceptional achievement in many areas that go beyond regular job duties. Some of these include:
A sample of Aleksandra’s submission included:
A sample of David’s submission included:
For a list of full recipients of this year’s Achievement Awards, visit the 2024 Achievement Award Recipients page. ![]() Aleksandra Blake ![]() David Jackson Keisha Cuffie, RFID project student and D is for Dazzling author We want to take a bit of time to showcase Keisha Cuffie, one of our RFID project students. Keisha is a student, a mom, and as we get to show here, an author. We recently acquired her children's book D is for Dazzling, which explores themes of intersectionality, abilities, and openness for children. D is For Dazzling showcases diversity, inclusion and empowerment through positive affirmations and representation. Children will see kids of all abilities having fun and exploring the world around them with friends & family. D is for Dazzling encourages dialogue with parents and their children about intersectionality, abilities and openness." Keisha's second book "I Am Victoria Lewis" is primed for release in April and is based on true Black Canadian history events. Keisha has provided more info on the upcoming release and her work at the Upper Canada Village: "Experience the remarkable journey of Victoria Lewis, a young girl with dreams so big they could not be contained. Journey with her as she learns to play a musical instrument and overcomes the prejudice of her time to inspire a whole community. Celebrated for her brilliant intellect and compassionate nature, she is believed to be the first black teacher at a non-segregated school in Canada in the 1800's. I had the privilege of contributing to the unveiling of her story while assisting with the curation of the first Black Canadian History Exhibit at Upper Canada Village Museum in Morrisburg, Ontario." The Black History Exhibit will have its grand opening in May 2024 and will highlight the untold stories of several individuals from Eastern, Ontario. The Lewis family whom I wrote about has descendants living in London, Ontario. Additionally, I am currently with building an educational program for Grades 5-10 with Black history content for trips to Upper Canada Village." ![]() Dominican friar makes a study of Dominican African graphic novels By Dominque Marshall The collection of graphic novels has 1563 pieces, and counting. They were produced in Europe, Africa, and North America. Yvon Pomerleau has read them all, from the controversial Tintin au Congo written and illustrated by Belgian comic strip artist Hergé in 1931, and leafed through during his childhood in Thetford Mines, to the recent series Aya de Yopougon, written since 2005 by Ivory Coast Marguerite Abouet, which follows a group of young teenage girls in Abidjan in the late 1970s. When I met him in the Dominican Provincial Office of Montreal, in mid-February 2024, he was reading the 2023 USA bestseller The Talk, by cartoonist Daryn Bell, about an African American child coming to term with the brutality of racism in Los Angeles. The Dominican friar collected graphic novels over the last five decades, in European and African bookstores, antique shops, and African markets. Altogether, he spent 25 years in various parts of Rwanda, from 1968 onwards, in all sorts of roles, from parish work on a motorbike to the foundation of a cultural center for youth in the Muslim quarter of Kigali, to the promotion of cooperative banking. He journeyed occasionally through the continent, first on behalf of the cooperative movement and, after 1994, as the delegate of Caritas International for the crisis of refugees from Rwanda. Pomerleau also bought albums in the stores of the Belgian capital, Brussels, as he transited between Rwanda and Canada. He continued collecting in Europe after he left Rwanda in 1995, during seven years spent assisting the Superior of the Dominicans based in Rome. Some items of his collection were stored in the main Dominican house of Kigali, and sent to Canada in the suitcases of dozens of Rwandan colleagues who visited Canada for study. Others were immediately shelved at the archives and library of the Dominican College of Ottawa. The treasure trove includes graphic novels produced by artists of all styles, others by churches or states using the medium for educational purpose. Besides are some photocopied small black and white publications produced locally for leisure or revolutionary mobilisation, and patriotic series distributed on the continent to tell the biographies of leaders of newly independent countries. In the midst of it all is the Belgian writer and artist Jean-Philippe Strassen’s acclaimed Déogratias, published in 2000 and translated in English in 2006, which tells the story of a Hutu teenager in love with a Tutsi girl at the time of the genocide. Many friends of Pomerleau, who was visiting a colleague in Congo at the start of the carnage of 1994, were killed then, many places he knew destroyed, many archives wiped away. What links all these pieces together is Pomerleau’s interest for visual representations of Black people. For him, graphic novels play a special role in the building of imaginaries: they reach children before they can read, appeal to large publics, and represent an important medium to communicate in societies with a living oral tradition. The same fascination led Pomerleau, in parallel, to gather photographs, post cards and stamps of Rwanda, as well as images of the three biblical Magi. If collecting graphic novels has been a pastime, the theme of understanding others, those who are different from oneself, has been central to Pomerleau’s own religious vocation. He entered the Dominican “order of preachers” in 1960, for a long eight years of training in Canada, and with the express wish to become a missionary. This was at the very time the Dominicans started to work in Rwanda and Burundi, with their characteristic mix of pastoral and intellectual endeavours. He arrived in 1968, six years after the independence of both countries from Belgian authorities. Back in Canada since the early 2000s, Pomerleau remains in touch with Montreal graphic novel stores who know his interests. He helped create “Foyer du monde” in the same city, a shelter for asylum seekers and migrants which opened in 2017. A scholar trained in Sociology at Laval University in Québec City during the early 1970s, Pomerleau never studied the collection systematically, even if he briefly wrote a small article about the image of missionaries in the Tintin series, and keeps the dictionary of the “bande dessinée” of French Africa beside his chair. His own wish is that the comic books he donated to Carleton University will be used to understand how visual representations and imaginaries of Black peoples have varied over time, spaces and publics, and to study their complex relations with prejudices and realities. Work consulted Christophe Cassiau-Haurie and Jason Kibiswa, Dictionnaire de la bande dessinée d’Afrique francophone, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2013. Mike Deep OP and Celestina Veloso Freitas OP, eds. Dominicans and Human Rights: Past, Present, Future, Hindmarsh (Australia) AFT Theology and Bogota, Iniversidad Santo Tomas, 2017. Valérie Laflamme, « Le scandale du Rwanda », Le verbe, printemps 2018, pp. 16- 19. https://le-verbe.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/r04_Guerre_final.pdf#page=16 Yvon Pomerleau, o.p. Présence dominicaine au Rwanda et au Burundi, Montréal, Les Missions dominicaines, 1999, 35p. Louise-Édith Tétreault, « Entrevue avec Yvon Pomerleau : Vaste monde, ma paroisse », Rencontre, Mars-Avril 2020, pp. 28-30. Interview of Yvon Pomerleau by Dominique Marshall, Montreal, 12 February 2024. On the controversies surrounding the racism of the 1931 graphic novel Tintin au Congo, see “Tintin décolonial1”, L’Histoire, February 2024, https://www.lhistoire.fr/tintin-d%C3%A9colonial ; Johan Palmer, “Tintin racism row puts spotlight on children's literature”, Guardian Africa Network, 15 October 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/15/tintin-racism-sweden-row
![]() Yvon Pomerleau Guest Lecture at the Library Dr. Bakare-Fatungase presented some of her research on Information Literacy to librarians and professional services staff. The “Research Made-Simple Lab,” elucidates the Novice2Expert Research Framework, emphasizing the pivotal role of librarians in enhancing students’ information literacy skills across varying proficiency levels. Dr. Oluwabunmi Bakare-Fatungase (Ph.D.) is an Information Professional/Researcher in the Department of Information Management, Faculty of Communication & Information Sciences, Lead City University, Nigeria. Her research interest covers emerging technologies, digital & virtual libraries, information use and user communities, bullying and mobile bullying, information literacy, etc. She is passionate about emphasizing the significant roles of Librarians in solving different societal issues with the arsenal of information at their disposal. She is a Fellow of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa. A Queen Elizabeth Scholar in the Advanced Scholars West Africa (QES-AS-WA) program, at the Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, and a visiting placement researcher at St. Paul University Canada.
![]() Library staff with Dr. Oluwabunmi Bakare-Fatungase Martha Attridge Bufton awarded Carleton University Experiential Learning Fund (CUELF) funding Martha Attridge Bufton was recently awarded funding through the 2023-24 Carleton University Experiential Learning Fund (CUELF). Martha will continue her work on an immersive WWII role-playing game to teach first-year students how to evaluate information to solve a complex historical problem. Read more about the seventeen award-winning projects. ![]() Martha Attridge Bufton Students create art for the New Sun Joy MacLaren Adaptive Technology Centre In January 2024, the Book Arts Lab & Library Accessibility Services team collaborated to host a paper marbling event for students with disabilities. Students who utilize Library Accessibility Services were invited to attend and create artwork for the New Sun Joy MacLaren Adaptive Technology Centre (JMC) in the Library. The JMC, conveniently located adjacent to the Book Arts Lab (BAL), is the dedicated study space in the Library for students with disabilities. The JMC was given a fresh coat of paint the previous summer and both the furniture, and all technology was updated. Many students using the JMC had voiced curiosity about the BAL and we saw this as an opportunity to decorate the refreshed centre, as well as teach students the core principles of paper marbling. We focused on simple stone patterns, using skewers to make patterns and experimenting with a couple different combs. We talked about what constitutes marbling bath, preparing the paper and how surface tension works with and against you in the process. The event was attended by 14 students registered with the JMC and there was much joy and appreciation for the opportunity to learn and create. An increasingly large majority of the students using accommodation services on campus, such as the JMC, are dealing with mental health challenges. Although wellness activities are not exclusively a solution to rising mental illness, we do know that creative outlets have positive impacts on student well-being. We are aiming to continue to offer these opportunities to students registered with Library Accessibility Services in future semesters. In addition to the JMC study space, Library Accessibility Services also provides students, faculty and staff access to alternate formats of course, research and Library materials. ![]() ![]() Release of the Library's annual report Read the 2022/2023 MacOdrum Library annual report to see the progress we’ve made toward our strategic priorities, as well as highlights from the past year. Student Satisfaction Survey results The results of the 2023 student satisfaction showed that students are very happy with the Library’s services, spaces and collections. Some highlights of the survey include:
These numbers are an improvement over the surveys previously distributed since 2005 and lastly in 2018. We will continue with projects and services to maintain the trend of making our space a welcome and helpful one for the Carleton community. Carleton Community Campaign Showcase Patti Harper (Assistant University Librarian), George Duimovich (Collections Librarian) and student employee Thora Asudeh (4th year Humanities and Religion), attended the event to showcase the Library Collections. Your continued support contributes directly to building the library collections. Therapy Animal Visit To round out the academic year we invited our therapy animal friends back to the library on the last day of classes for the Winter Term. A great calming way to kick off the stressful final exam phase of this academic year. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() click for more information on the course! Stay Tuned – Next Issue
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