By Joseph Jeffery
Walking in Two Worlds, the Ontario Library Association’s 2023 Super Conference was held virtually and in-person at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on February 1-4, 2023. The first in-person Super Conference since the COVID-19 pandemic began. This was my second super conference and first in-person one. Coming from the wilds of Northern BC to a metropolitan area larger than the population of my entire province, this was quite the experience for me. I am a former elementary and high school teacher-librarian, now serving as our District Learning Commons Teacher-Librarian (equivalent to a library coordinator, helping librarian or district teacher-librarian).
After delays from a snowy morning in Prince George, BC caused me to miss my connecting flight to Toronto, I finally landed at Pearson around 10 pm, took the Union Pearson express downtown and walked the few blocks to my hotel in the cold lake air. As a first time visitor to the downtown core, I am struck by the similarities to Vancouver. Replacing the Georgia Strait and Burrard inlet with Lake Ontario, the Shangri-la with the CN tower and you have an equally striking skyline and wind to boot.
The next morning, an equally brisk and chilly walk to the conference centre later, I arrived at the OLA proper. Phone in hand, pheedloop ready with all my selections at easy reach. The app is slick but sometimes a little confusing as the time delineations are easy to miss. First stop, the vendor hall…or it would be if the conference was in person. Realizing my error I returned to my hotel and set up for Day 1 – Virtual sessions.
First session was Connecting Outside Of The Library World: Building A Learning Garden from Halton District School Board’s Bryn Dewar and Cait Fehir. Though the session was short, a peril of online where Q+A sometimes happens and sometimes doesn’t, it gave me a lot to think about as we explore the possibilities of land-based learning in our district. Taking the learning commons into land-based areas is a fascinating idea and though I wish it had been longer, it gave me some ideas to take forward around authentic inquiry-based learning.
Next was Discord for Teens from Elaine Knox and Matthew Wagner. Discord is a social chat app where users create and utilize servers—walled areas that they can be invited to—for chat, sharing memes, streaming content and voice chat. Library engagement with teens needs to meet them where they are and most teens are already on discord, especially if they are gamers. This presentation was phenomenal in showing the power (and risks) in utilizing a social platform they are part of. Thankfully there are many bots (automated AI programs) discord offers to deal with moderation allowing human moderation to occur with less frequency.
The next day the in-person conference began. We kicked off with the first major award hand out of the President’s Award to First Nations public libraries of Ontario, accepted on behalf of the group by Feather Maracle. These librarians run on-reserve libraries on a shoe-string budget which includes a meager salary for themselves. However, they continuously offer far more time, energy and their own personal money to creating community hubs and centres for preserving the history, language and culture of their people. It was horrifying to hear how little these libraries received in funding, as well as how many had closed during the pandemic and yet the strength of these librarians in the face of this was highlighted time and again.
Following the award, multi-disciplinary trans and bipoc artist Vivek Shraya took the stage, her sheer presence commanding the room. She started by highlighting the conference title and questioning “why only two worlds”, much like the phrase “be our authentic self”, Vivek pointed out that we are more than a singular self. More than in one world or two. Instead we grow and change constantly and the perfect is never in-reach because it simply does not exist. Instead of reaching for perfection, we should, she posited, reach for growth. These words made me think of the core of my educational philosophy around life-long learning. I wrote down the connection, underlining it three times to make sure it sunk into my sometimes dense brain.
From there it was on to the school library meet and greet where I met twitter friends for the first time. Names I saw all the time like MzMollyTL and MrsLyonsLibrary coalesced into human beings! Chatting away to another Teacher-Librarian from BC about collaboration, high school subjects and drawing teachers in, I missed my first scheduled sessions start. Not wanting to be rude and come in late I went up to the Vendor Expo. Huge mistake. Instead of missing one session I would now miss two as I was destined to become lost in amongst the things to see, people to meet and the ideas that trampled my sense of time like it was Mufasa. Apps, 3D printers, authors, new releases, online databases, video libraries; forget Disneyland, this was my magical kingdom!
Foregoing lunch so I could make it at least one session, and do my job reporting on the conference, I headed to the Intercontinental Hotel’s meeting rooms. My first stop was in Niagara for Youth 1UP – Giving Voice To Youth Through Gaming from my local public librarian, Chris Knapp of Prince George Public Library, BC. Yes, I had travelled 5000 kilometres, but the topic was interesting and paired exceptionally well with Discord and Teens from the previous day. This was a look at the power of gaming – tabletop and video – as a social tool for teens and youth. It’s something I did as a practicing TL and have encouraged in other schools, but wanted to hear someone else’s arguments so I can do a better job persuading others on how important it is. You may be noticing a theme with improving the experience of teens in the library for what I have gone to and how to create connections with them. This has been a constant question from schools and was a major goal for me in this conference. Is it a coincidence that Wab Kinew’s book Walking in Two Worlds is about teens, culture and video games and I was wrestling with this at a conference with the same name? Timely thoughts often percolate to the top of the zeitgeist.
After this was the second of the days keynotes and the second major award. First up in this segment was a goodbye to the outgoing 2022 OLA leadership and a welcome and introduction to the 2023 group. Beth Lyons steps down as OSLA president and vice-president Johanna Gibson-Lawler takes over as president with Wendy Burch-Jones as vice-president. Two awards the Ken Haycock award and the Larry Moore distinguished service award were presented together to Victoria Owen for her outstanding work in promoting librarianship, teaching new generations and establishing lasting programs in public and academic settings.
Following this we were treated to A Conversation with Anand Giridharadas, the author of The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy (2022), with OLA President Dr. Sabrina Saunders. This was a fascinating chat about how important libraries and library staff were as information keepers, along with a look at some of the data behind polarization, politicization and the inability to talk to one another. Anand specifically addressed the need, as we move towards fixing issues with society, to not alienate those who didn’t grow up in those ideas of femininity, masculinity, gender roles or even climate change. It takes more time to bring them around and forcing progress on them, instead of working with them, can feel like we are saying they have wasted their lives or that their choices were bad. This is how people get pushed towards radicalized views because it is easy to stoke those fears. So if we want progress in these areas, we have to work to call these people into the work, rather than calling them out and potentially shunning them. That doesn’t mean letting them continue in bad ways of treating people, but to find alternative ways of getting the message across that leads them down the path and makes them feel like they are part of the journey rather than an obstacle in the way.
With that, the day was over, by the conversations were not. I was quickly inducted into the nerdy kids table of OSLA super geeks and we were off to an amazing dinner on the 44th floor of a building downtown. Teacher-Librarians have a universal passion for inclusion that means you feel at home in a group of them no matter where you are. It was as if I had known this group all my life. Dinner done it was time to return to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre for some drag bingo with Fluffy Soufflé. We were too late to Bingo but not too late to have fun and dance.
Next morning it’s bright and early and time for a session from teacher-librarian Jonelle St. Aubyn, recent winner of the Angela Thacker Award, and geography teacher/teacher-librarian Christina Niro. Together they discussed ways they pushed the envelope at Louise Arbor Secondary School to provide ways to connect with teens, and how they were prepared for the pandemic and how they encourage others to prepare in case they need to pivot in the future.
Each stream at OLA Super Conference has a spotlight speaker and for the School Libraries Stream it was Dr. David Anderson from Indigenous owned and operated book seller Goodminds.com. Prior to the start of the spotlight the OLA Media Campaign award was given out to the #SchoolLibraryJoy campaign. This social media campaign to bring awareness to the amazing work of School Library Learning Commons focused on highlighting what the profession does and how it contributes to education. The campaign included physical items too such as t-shirts and buttons and was run by OSLA with support from Canadian School Libraries, TinLids and the BC Teacher Librarians’ Association. After the award was handed out, Dr. Anderson chatted to us about proliferation of Indigenous texts and the difficulties with Dewey and finding information within library systems. How does a patron find an Anishinaabe text, how are teacher-librarians selecting texts and are they around diverse subjects or just Orange Shirt Day / Residential schools? In BC this has been a focus for a few years now, and within my school district we have spent considerable time updating our MARC records with up-to-date terminology from the outdated “American Indians” subject heading. From some of the discussions in the room it was clear that we were all at different points of this journey, but that we recognized that we needed to be on the road for it.
After a quick lunch it was back to back sessions with CIVIX, a non-profit that has many civic engagement tools including Student Vote, Budget Discussions and more. First up was a look at the CTRL+F resource. I had used CTRL+F in the past but it had recently seen an update and it was interesting to see the ways in which it had changed. The resource has such great use for discussing lateral reading, where students leave the page to find information, that it starts conversations about how digital and information literacy work in our information rich environments. Not a new issue, but the new, from when I used it, lessons and resources gave me a lot to take back to my school district.
The second CIVIX session was their brand new PoliTalks resource. It is just being finalized and is about teaching students how to have constructive discussions rather than debates. This was a great addendum to Anand Giridharadas’ keynote on political discourse. The part of this that stuck with me is that there is not actually a noticeable change in viewpoints. Data suggests that what the average voters on the left and right believe in has not shifted. What has shifted is the perception of what the other side believes in, and our ability to tolerate the other side. Which means it isn’t changing beliefs, it is changing perceptions that needs to happen, and with this listening to each other rather than the outrage machine. We got to demo a lesson and it was surprisingly difficult to not debate when discussing, but to practice our active listening skills even though what we were talking about was a ranking on what is most important for a good discussion. While this resource is not quite finished yet, it is shaping up to be another great one from CIVIX.
Caroline Freibauer. (Read tributes to Caroline.)
Finally it was time for the closing keynote from Elamin Abdelmahmoud and the final award hand out. The Ontario School Library Association Lifetime Achievement Award was being posthumously given to teacher-librarian legend Caroline Freibauer for her tireless work promoting School Library Learning Commons including her involvement on provincial and national organizations. It was an emotional tribute to someone who was instrumental in the lives of so many within the room, and beyond.
Elamin read the room perfectly coming off such an emotional moment, he leaned into the energy in the room, choosing to latch on to the gravity of the situation rather than just following his script to the letter. Beginning with his feeling of fear, something he came back to multiple times, he situated himself with some personal history as a black, immigrant. He told stories of coming to Canada at 12; using wrestling to connect with friends; becoming obsessed with writing wrestling fan-fic online. He even gave us the “hot goss” on how big you have to be to fit the Polkaroo suit (6’1” if you’re wondering) from his time working at TVO. This fit with the core of his keynote, on the importance of story in communication. That we have now reached the “choose your own adventure” phase of democracy. That we are no longer communicating with each other using the same set of facts. Moreover, we tell ourselves stories about others, about how they behave and why. As well as stories about ourselves. This self talk, these stories we tell ourselves, aren’t necessarily true and are part of how we have ended up with such a diverse set of ‘facts’ about the world. How do we centre ourselves against that self-talk? We need to learn when to pause it, to learn when to listen and when to ignore it and be conscious of what is going on.
After the keynote there was just the after party with plenty of pink bubbly and suddenly it was all over. The Super Conference done for another year. My first, but I hope not my last. It was amazing to meet so many excellent TLs who have impacted me so much over the years via social media and to feel like I had known them forever. It was like coming home, in many ways. So on that note I say ‘Awetzeh (that is all in Lheidli Dakelh).
Joseph Jeffery is the District Learning Commons Teacher-Librarian for SD57 Prince George, BC. He has been a TL since 2013 at both elementary and high school. He is an immigrant to Canada and is Bangladeshi/English on his mother’s side and Ukrainian/English on his fathers’. He supports teachers and teacher-librarian’s throughout the district in resource selection and acquisitions, e-resources, and all types of literacy. Joseph is the BCTLA’s conference organizer, and a lead writer for CSL’s Collection Diversity Toolkit.