UBC Library Journal Club

There are several ways you  can be in the UBC Library Journal Club.

• Attend the Library Journal Club meetings as a participant.
• Notify Erin Fields of potential discussion topics, articles, or reports.
• Offer to facilitate a session.
• Provide a short presentation on an area of study, research, or workshop that you have either attended or facilitated.

Facilitating a Session

To facilitate a session, read the general format of the meetings at What to Expect at a Meeting and contact Erin Fields with a brief outline of your session and details of a date and time that works with your schedule.

Presenting for the Journal Club

The Journal Club has often accepted requests from individuals for larger presentations and panels on topics.  While the main focus of the Journal Club will be evaluating research in librarianship, presentations can be a part of the meetings if they are shorter in length and offer the attendees a chance to discuss/evaluate.  To volunteer a presentation for the Journal Club, please contact Erin Fields.

flickr photo by Leo Reynolds

The Journal Club Format

The general format of the UBC Library Journal Club is as follows:

• A reading, facilitator, and date for the Journal Club will be announced two weeks prior to the meeting.
• The facilitator will be responsible for introducing the article.  The introduction will be up to 15 minutes.
• The facilitator will offer a few conversation points to begin the discussion.
• Depending on the size of the group, the attendees will be split into groups to discuss the reading for 20 minutes.
• The facilitator will bring the groups back together to discuss the ideas that came out of the small group work.

Place Your Hand Over Your Heart – The UBC Library Journal Club Attendees Motto

Remember the Boy Scouts motto?   Be prepared.  Well, think of this as our unofficial motto.

The journal club is based on the idea of critical discussion and interaction with topics that are important to librarianship.  To get the most out of the experience, we need you to prepare for the meetings by reading the material, thinking critically about the content, and a willingness to share your ideas with your colleagues.

While there will be no badges given out for your contribution, please consider posting your ideas and thoughts to the blog.  I hope the blog can also become a place for critical discussion.  If you can’t make it to the Journal Club meeting, post some ideas you have in the blog about the topic.  If you were at the meeting and believed the conversation should be highlighted or you were unable to express a point of view, think of the blog as a continuation of the discussion.

Too frequently our library’s professional folks fail to find time to discuss, as a group, library issues that do not impact or day-to-day operation and routine. We are absorbed in completing the immediate daily tasks and assigned duties and don’t seem to find time to read (let alone discuss and analyze) our professional literature.

Too bad, since the library world is constantly evolving and things do change.

This journal club, initiated by a group of librarians in the University of British Columbia library in Vancouver, Canada is created to build a forum for relaxed dialogue and professional discourse around academic libraries related topics. The meetings are organized once a month about a topic of discussion, say “the future of a catalogue”.

We want to gather, to share, to discuss, to problem solve, to learn and of course to grow professionally. Sessions will be short – 1 hour, and we invite everybody from the UBC library community to join. We would also be happy to open the floor to additional libraries in the Lower Mainland.

We are hoping that this forum would lead to new ideas and new projects in our system.

Stay tuned for the precise dates, times, locations, and topics!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Erin Fields (Humanities & Social Sciences Librarian).

** Photo by Roadsidepictures