Message from the Associate Vice-President and University Librarian

McMaster library spaces

Lyons New Media Centre opens virtual reality room and podcast studio

Lyons New Media Centre has expanded its offerings with two new spaces for the McMaster community to learn and create.

The group podcast studio and a virtual reality room opened in September 2023 to serve McMaster students, faculty, and staff. The fresh additions complement the centre’s existing lineup of media services and spaces.

“Our team is constantly evaluating the evolving trends in media and technology, and assessing how we can incorporate those trends into our services,” said Rhonda Moore, manager of Lyons. “We’re thrilled to offer our campus community two new spaces to explore their creative side and discover unconventional ways of learning through modern technology.”

A hub of creativity and technology, Lyons New Media Centre is located on the fourth floor of Mills Memorial Library.

The new virtual reality room offers two Meta Quest headsets and a television for casting live experiences to spectators. Each headset is equipped with a range of educational apps, including Blueplanet VR, which enables users to explore some of the world’s most remarkable locations.

Next door to the virtual reality room is the audio studio, which now includes a large podcast room for group recording sessions.

The private space features a table with chairs for up to four people, four sets of microphones and headphones, a computer equipped with audio editing software, and sound-dampening walls. Users can also make use of the webcam and portable greenscreen for video recording.

McMaster President David Farrar is among the many users—and fans—of the already popular group podcast studio. 

“It’s a pleasure to film my new video podcast series in the Lyons New Media Centre,” said Farrar. “This new studio, along with the virtual reality room, show how the library is at the cutting edge of digital technologies that support world-class teaching and learning at McMaster.”

Mapping a diverse collection at McMaster library

Saman Goudarzi is blazing her own trail as the cartographic resources librarian at McMaster University.

Goudarzi joined McMaster in 2022, drawn by the opportunity to work as one of the few academic map librarians in Canada.

“It was daunting arriving at a new library during the pandemic, but it was incredibly exciting at the same time,” she said. “Two years in, I finally feel like I am getting to really know the collection and how I want to shape it moving forward.”

McMaster University Library is considered one of the main players in the field of military maps. Most recently, its maps were featured in the Second World War drama, Masters of the Air, which debuted on Apple TV+.

Goudarzi is continuing to grow the western cartography collection while also working to enhance diversity.

Hamilton-focused cartography is one area of focus, with the acquisition of traditional and untraditional maps. As an example, Goudarzi cites the recently acquired zine The Hamilton Sub Register created by an artist who mapped past and present sandwich shops in the city. 

“It provides us with a unique snapshot of Hamilton at a particular point in time,” she said.

Another new focus is documenting what she calls “invisible voices” that were involved in early cartography.

She notes that French cartographers often collaborated with Indigenous peoples when creating maps of the ‘New World’. Goudarzi has partnered with Ruth-Ellen St. Onge, McMaster’s distinctive collections cataloguing librarian, to ensure rare maps with Indigenous contributions are appropriately described in the library’s digital catalogue.

“While these maps are products of colonialism, by adopting a more critical lens, we can re-examine, and reinterpret them, challenging dominant perspectives and uncovering hidden narratives,” she said.

“These maps can therefore play a crucial role in decolonization work, as well.”

Among the other current initiatives are documenting works printed by women-owned presses, adding maps from Global South authors, and working with small presses to add more local voices to the collections.

Supporting made-at-McMaster teaching and learning resources

A grant program led by McMaster University Library and MacPherson Institute, funded by the Office of the Provost, is supporting the creation and adaptation of new teaching and learning materials by McMaster instructors.

The Open Educational Resources (OER) grant program was introduced as a three-year pilot in 2020 with $30,000 available each year. The program expanded in 2023, with double the funding available for each of the next three years.

“The OER grants provide support for McMaster instructors as they integrate these materials into their courses,” said Katie Harding, teaching and learning librarian, OER and STEM at McMaster University Library. “The different grant types ensure that there’s flexibility for instructors to use OER in the ways that work for them.”

The McMaster grant program was created to increase instructors’ awareness of OER and encourage exploration of new teaching approaches. The program offers instructors options to develop customized course materials that support learning outcomes, while lowering costs for students who no longer need to purchase these materials. To date, OER created through the grant program have saved McMaster students an estimated $700,000. 

The program is supported by the Office of the Provost, McMaster University Library, the MacPherson Institute, and McMaster Students Union.

Grant recipients to date come from all five faculties and the DeGroote School of Business.

Felicia Vulcu and Caitlin Mullarkey, associate professors in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, received a 2023-2024 grant to create the Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences Thesis Course Guidebook. It will be launched using the Pressbooks platform and will be openly available globally for adaptation and adoption.

“The McMaster OER grant program is vital to supporting the creation, adaptation, and adoption of OER content,” said Vulcu. “This type of content disrupts traditional teaching barriers and allows for open access content created by the McMaster community. The ability to customize truly enhances the learning experience and comes closer to providing a more personalized educational experience for both the content creator and the end user.”

Bringing the “big bus full of books” to campus

The bookmobile is a library branch on wheels, and it is rolling up to campus every week. 

A mainstay of Hamilton Public Library, the bookmobile started making weekly stops on the McMaster University campus during the 2023-2024 academic year.

Since the first visit in September 2023, it has received hundreds of visitors.

“McMaster University Library is excited to partner with Hamilton Public Library to bring the bookmobile to campus,” said Lynne Serviss, associate university librarian, User Services and Community Engagement.

“We have received so much positive feedback from McMaster students, in particular, since we launched this initiative.”  

McMaster library staff identified a gap between the more academic collection that the library has on campus and some of the leisure-focused needs of the students. This included leisure reading, popular fiction, health and wellness materials, and other resources like cookbooks.  

McMaster library regularly partners with Hamilton Public Library on initiatives and events to foster community engagement, so it seemed only logical to bring the beloved bookmobile to campus.

Cindy Poggiaroni, director, Collections and Program Development at Hamilton Public Library, says the bookmobile stop at campus helps both organizations serve different populations in the community.  

“We’re thrilled the McMaster community is embracing this service with many touring the bus, signing up for library cards, and picking up their holds,” she said. 

The weekly bookmobile visits have returned for the 2024-2025 academic year. Serviss says she hopes the weekly visits make accessing good reads easier for the McMaster community.  

“It’s not always easy for people to make their way to a local library branch, so I love the idea of bringing the library to them,” said Serviss. “I hope our McMaster community finds this resource helpful. For some, it will also bring back a bit of childhood nostalgia to get on that big bus full of books.”  

Falling “Innis” Love

The past year has seen significant progress made on the construction of the new Innis Library at the McLean Centre for Collaborative Discovery at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Business. Employees are excitedly preparing to open the business library and welcome the McMaster community in fall 2025.

If it’s broke, fix it at Thode Makerspace Repair Café

It’s Wednesday afternoon and Thode Makerspace is a hub of activity.

A student is busy at a sewing machine mending a rip in a backpack, a community volunteer is working to fix a necklace clasp, and a team of library staff and students is working to repair a toaster that won’t pop.

Welcome to Thode Makerspace Repair Café, a monthly event hosted by the library to divert waste from the landfill and bring the community together to share learning and skills.

“I think the repair café can have an impact on the environment through the ability to bring broken, old, or discarded items back to life,” said Vladimir (Vlad) Brundula-Ilija, a third-year civil engineering and society student. “We are not only able to guide participants through the repair process, allowing items to receive a second life, but we can also encourage people to think further before discarding items.”

The repair café concept is a global initiative that seeks to resist the throw-away economy by empowering people to repair their broken items instead of getting rid of them. McMaster University Library hosted its first repair café in 2020. Today, the event is hosted monthly throughout the academic year.

Brittany Sostar, Makerspace coordinator, says it has been powerful seeing the growth in the skill sets of everyone involved in the repair café.

“We have a participant come by regularly with clothing that needs repaired,” Sostar said. “During his first visit, we sat with him and showed him how to patch his pants. By the second and third visits, he was sewing patches on his own clothing. It’s a good feeling to take on something you might have otherwise thought was not possible.”

Volunteers from the McMaster community and beyond are always needed to support the Thode Makerspace Repair Café. For more information, email mkrspace@mcmaster.ca.

Making space for more voices in library collections

Librarians and staff in the Content, Access, and Open Licensing division are committed to diversifying the voices in McMaster University Library’s physical and digital collections.

Working together, they are expanding the narrative of what has traditionally been presented in academic scholarship.

“Past publishing has generally focused on the voices of white men—but this is only one perspective,” said Janice Adlington, head of collections and content strategy. “We want to showcase a range of voices in our collections here at McMaster University Library.”

Some of the voices librarians and staff have strived to amplify identify as 2SLGBTQI+, African and Caribbean, living with a disability, women and BIPOC in STEM, and Indigenous, among many others.

The team has collaborated closely with Crystal Mark, the library’s new diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility strategist since her arrival last fall. This has led to more materials, such as those built around special celebrations like Lunar New Year and Black History Month, and relationships built with bookstores, including those that are Black or Indigenous owned.

There has been an emphasis on ensuring new acquisitions encompass not only traditional print materials like books, but also electronic resources like e-books, primary source databases, and films.

Casey Hoeve, who joined McMaster University Library in fall 2022 as the new associate university librarian, Content, Access, and Open Licensing, and strategically leads the initiatives of the division, says he is proud of the work done to date and that is underway with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility at the forefront.   

“Libraries are considered places of record for those searching for truth,” Hoeve said. “It is essential we present a variety of perspectives and narratives, especially in this academic setting, to present a clearer picture of that truth.”

Read about complementary acquisitions in the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections later in this report.

Q & A with Crystal Mark

Crystal Mark is the new diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility strategist at McMaster University Libraries.

After spending more than 20 years in the field, she brings her expertise in equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-oppression to McMaster University Library and the Health Sciences Library.

She says she was drawn to the role at McMaster University as it was a perfect fit for her as someone who loves reading, learning, poetry, and knowledge keeping.

Here, she shares her hopes for this role, how she is connecting with the McMaster community, and why her work matters. 

What can you tell us about your new role?

My role is to embed diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) into the framework and infrastructure of the libraries. I am creating activities and processes that are going to allow us to bring greater inclusion into the workplace, have an anti-racist framework, and consider accessibility among our core tenants of how we run the libraries. I am creating guiding documents, such as a primer on pronouns for people to understand why pronouns are important, how to use them, and how not to use them. I am also creating an onboarding document with guiding principles and definitions so that we’re all on the same page in our language around DEIA. How we communicate is a big part of how we treat each other.  

Why does your work matter?

This work matters because it’s at the crux of our sense of humanity. DEIA work includes all of us. If we do it right—sometimes we try and we fail and that’s okay—then we are working towards a world that is more inclusive. It means a better quality of life; that people feel confident about who they are as they come to work because they can share their whole selves. It’s important that everyone is invested in DEIA because it’s everyone’s conversation, everyone’s discussion, everyone’s dialogue, and everyone’s responsibility.  

What are your measures of success?

One measure of success is if people feel more comfortable talking about race, accessibility, disability, and justice, and if people who have privilege champion these groups and these issues in our work culture. Another measure of success is collaboration with other departments on campus and more engagement with students. I also launched a DEIA LinkedIn Learning series for library staff, which would be an important milestone.

How are you engaging the McMaster community?

I like to go out and meet people. I organized an event to celebrate Black History Month and contributions to the literary canon from the diaspora. Readers from around the university, including Clare Warner, Renata Hall, and Juliet Daniel performed and read seminal works from the Afro-Caribbean-Canadian diaspora. In addition to that, I assisted in hosting Drag Story Time to raise awareness about Freedom to Read Week and the need to have all reading accessible to us in our communities. We are also creating a welcome sign in several different languages for the entrances of Mills Memorial Library. These actions will hopefully make people want to come into the library space and be happy to be here to talk about life, politics, justice, and more. I think it is excellent if we can create spaces to have those conversations.  

Is there anything else you would like people to know?

I love to think of DEIA work as a baton. You’re given 30 to 40 years in your career, and you’re handed a baton. Your responsibility is to take up that leg of the race. While I take up my leg of the race, I want to build legacy and trust within organizations and people. I want to allow people to speak freely, to get it wrong, to move forward, and to try again. When I’m done with my work, I hand the baton off to the next generation. I know that I can’t solve the world’s problems in 40 years, but I can try, and we should all try. Working collaboratively as champions, great things can happen here at the libraries and at McMaster.

Meet our new colleagues

McMaster University Library welcomed more than a dozen full-time colleagues between May 2023 and April 2024. Here, four recent additions to the library team write about their work and why it matters to the McMaster community and beyond.

Supporting Bertrand Russell Archives a family legacy

One of Bernard Linsky’s favourite places is the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University Library.

As a respected philosopher and Russell scholar, it is logical that Linsky is a regular visitor and supporter. 

What’s unique is that he lives more than 3,000 kilometres away in Edmonton and is a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta. 

“People are sometimes surprised when I tell them I support McMaster University Library considering where I live and work,” he said with a chuckle. “I tell them that I want to support an institution, regardless of where it is located, that aligns with my passion.”      

It could be said that Russell is in Linsky’s blood. His father, Leonard Linsky (1922-2012), was a renowned American philosopher and professor with a particular interest in Russell’s work.

“I remember uncovering manuscript material for the second edition of Principia Mathematica during one of my visits to the Bertrand Russell Archives when it was still located in the basement of the library,” he said. “I went back to my hotel and called up my father. He was one of the people who really understood the importance of what I had found.”

The McMaster discovery gave Linsky his next project and resulted in the publication of his 2011 book, The Evolution of Principia Mathematica: Bertrand Russell’s Manuscripts and Notes for the Second Edition.

Linsky says the people at both the Bertrand Russell Archives and the Research Centre, which share the same building, are as close to his heart as its papers and books. He is grateful for Ken Blackwell, Nick Griffin, and several other faculty and librarians affiliated with the archives. 

“Archivists have a very good idea of what they have and what papers scholars should be looking at there,” said Linsky. “They have also sent me photocopies of materials between my yearly visits, which has been so helpful.”

When Linsky’s beloved father passed away, he knew he wanted to do something meaningful to honour his memory. As a result, he has generously donated to McMaster’s Bertrand Russell Archives in memory of his dad and mom, Leonard and Joan Linsky.

His gift in October 2018 allowed for the purchase of the first two volumes of Principia Mathematica proofs. The three-volume work published in 1910, 1912, and 1913 was written by Russell and Alfred North Whitehead. It is arguably Russell’s best known and most influential work.

Two years later, another significant donation by Linsky supported the purchase of G.H. Hardy’s copy of Principia Mathematica. Hardy was a renowned mathematician, a good friend of Russell’s at Trinity College, and reviewer of Principia Mathematica in The Times Literary Supplement. The copy features extensive notes in the margin.

There was a gift-in-kind soon after of a first edition of Russell’s 1912 book, The Problems of Philosophy.

Then, in May 2024, Linsky supported the purchase of an extraordinary collection of more than 2,000 pieces of correspondence between Russell and his first wife, Alys, and Russell and his publisher.

Vivian Lewis, associate vice-president and university librarian, says she is indebted to Linsky for his ongoing support.

“Bernie’s donations have enabled us to purchase several exciting additions to the Bertrand Russell Archives that we simply could not afford on our own,” said Lewis. “Supporters like Bernie are having a significant impact on Russell scholarship by making more documents and letters publicly available.”

Linsky says his father would have been tickled to learn he’s a supporter of the Bertrand Russell Archives.

“I think he would have liked it,” he said with a smile. “There’s even a room named after my parents at the archives, and that is a nice way to recognize them.”

Measuring the impact of McMaster University research

Jack Young admits he didn’t have research impact and bibliometrics librarian on his vision board when he graduated with a master of library and information science in 2014.

What he did plan for was meeting the needs of people coming to the library for support and being adaptive.

After nine years as a digital projects librarian at McMaster University’s Health Sciences Library, Young moved across campus in early 2024 to become McMaster library’s first full-time continuing research impact and bibliometrics librarian. 

“This area was not something I was aware even existed when I started my career,” said Young. “As I continued in higher education and understood what was vital to keep the wheels turning when it came to research, it seemed that research impact and responsible research assessment were critically important.”

Bibliometrics use statistical approaches to better understand how research is produced, organized, and interrelated. It is one important tool among many to evaluate and illustrate areas of research strength, collaboration potential, and research impact.

During his time at the Health Sciences Library, Young gradually expanded his expertise and service offerings in the field, providing research impact assessments and bibliometric analyses for the research community. 

Today, Young works with researchers and staff to develop comprehensive views of research output and impact at individual, group, and organizational scales. Often this information is required when applying for grants or awards.

He is also supporting the vice-president, Research, in understanding the impact of policies from the Canadian government around funding for certain types of research.

“The highlight of my role is working one-on-one with researchers and administrators,” said Young. “My favourite part of being a librarian has always been the people.”

Jay Brodeur, director of Digital Research Infrastructure and Scholarship Services, says it was the right time to add this permanent role to support McMaster’s research community.

“A global shift towards innovative and equitable research impact assessment is underway, and McMaster is on board,” Brodeur said. “We’re delighted to have Jack join the university library.”