By the TMC8 Organizing Committee
The eighth biennial TMC Symposium (TMC8) is coming soon, and it’s time for you to register! Treasure Mountain Canada is a unique event; not a conference, but an opportunity to collaboratively explore ideas, inspire each other, and build collective knowledge. We tackle the burning issues of the day, hearing from the experts, yes, but actively involving symposium participants in a deep dive into the theme and sub-themes, identifying areas for growth, and helping Canadian School Libraries to take concrete steps forward.
Registration for TMC8 and for the OLA Super Conference is now open! Don’t miss this exciting opportunity!
Top Ten Reasons You Need to Be There!
- Learn from the experts. TMC’s keynote and spotlight speakers provide focus for our deep exploration.
- Take the opportunity to contribute your own action research. We put out the call for papers some time ago, and they are coming in! So many school library professionals have contributed accounts of their own action research over the life of TMC. Consider giving it a try!
- Take the opportunity to actively participate and build your own knowledge. Good news! You don’t need to contribute a paper to participate in TMC. All participants actively contribute as we take the deep dive into the symposium theme.
- Learn from your colleagues. We invite everyone to read TMC8 papers, and several writers will lead discussions about their action research at the trademark TMC table talks.
- Attend our partner conference. This year we’re at the OLA Super Conference! TMC symposiums are held in partnership with provincial school library associations, with past events taking place across the country. For TMC8 we are partnering again with OSLA and TALCO, and TMC8 is back at the OLA Super Conference, the country’s largest library conference and library trade show. Our registration options make it easy to attend both events!
- Help build more “made in Canada” research. One of TMC’s key goals is to build a body of “made in Canada” scholarship about school library learning commons practice. All TMC papers are published and made available to everyone through the CSL Research Archive website.
- Network, network, network! You will never get a better opportunity to grow your professional learning network as you work closely with teacher-librarians, school library professionals, and scholars from across the country.
- Be stimulated by the TMC experience. There’s nothing like it! Be prepared to come away from TMC8 inspired and stimulated. As long-time participant Dianna Maliszewski put it, “Treasure Mountain Canada is worth the effort to seek that treasure and climb that mountain.” (CSL Journal Spring 2022)
- Be a part of a cohesive national approach. Education may be a provincial jurisdiction, but we are all in this together. TMC8 is all about building a cohesive approach across all jurisdictions to the role of the school library learning commons, and voices from across the country will share the experience. We want to hear from you, too.
- Help CSL plan for the future. TMC symposiums address emerging needs, and Canadian School Libraries acts on what we learn. It was TMC that inspired the creation of our national standards, Leading Learning, and subsequent symposiums have inspired continuous and relevant updates to this wonderful “living document”. Significant updates came out of the work of TMC7. Have you checked it out recently? Other TMC-inspired projects include the CSL Collection Diversity Toolkit, and most recently, Foundations for School Library Learning Commons in Canada: A Framework for Success, the document that inspired this year’s symposium.