McGill University Library Research Articles

Launching a Virtual Study Hall Service for University Students During the Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic forced libraries to reconsider their programming and services to be offered remotely. A series of Virtual Study Halls were developed at the McGill University Library as a way to connect with students during library closures. The Virtual Study Halls took on different formats and themes to mimic various study spaces on campus and were offered over the course of Fall 2020 and Winter 2021 on Zoom. The experience of coordinating this service offered new opportunities to collaborate with other departments on campus and create relationships with users.

The launch of Seismica: a seismic shift in publishing

Seismica, a community-run Diamond Open Access (OA) journal for seismology and earthquake science, opened for submissions in July 2022. We created Seismica to support a shift to OA publishing while pushing back against the extreme rise in the cost of OA author processing charges, and the inequities this is compounding. Seismica is run by an all-volunteer Board of 47 researchers who fulfil traditional editorial roles as well as forming functional teams to address the needs for technical design and support, copy editing, media and branding that would otherwise be covered by paid staff at a for-profit journal. We are supported by the McGill University Library (Québec, Canada), who host our website and provide several other services, so that Seismica does not have any income or financial expenditures. We report the process of developing the journal and explain how and why we made some of the major policy choices. We describe the organizational structure of the journal, and discuss future plans and challenges for the continued success and longevity of Seismica.

Taylor White's ‘paper museum’

For almost 40 years, the British jurist and Fellow of the Royal Society Taylor White (1701–1772) actively engaged in commissioning artists to paint plants and animals for his ‘paper museum’. White amassed a collection of almost 1000 drawings of birds, mammals, fish, amphibians and reptiles, acquired by McGill University in 1927. His first recorded purchase was a watercolour by George Edwards (1694–1773). He also acquired works from Eleazar Albin ( fl. 1690– ca 1742) and Jacob van Huysum ( ca 1687–1740), but the majority of the watercolours were painted by two artists, Charles Collins ( ca 1680–1744) and Peter Paillou ( ca 1712–1782). In 2018 a research group at McGill University Library received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the project ‘Undescrib'd: Taylor White's paper museum’. The project produced a complete catalogue of the White collection, including attribution of all unsigned works, and digitized all paintings and notes. This paper documents the process surrounding the original creation of the collection, reviewing the careers of the artists and White's relationship with them, the value of the commissions and the challenges of painting natural history subjects. It also describes the mechanics of painting, including pigments, papers used and artists' techniques.

Fruitful collaborations: the Taylor White project in the Blacker Wood Natural History Collection

As part of a themed print issue of Notes and Records dedicated to a research project surrounding the eighteenth-century Taylor White collection of animal paintings, this article provides context by describing the initial acquisition of the collection, and by situating it within the larger Blacker Wood Natural History Collection held at McGill University Library. Highlights of the Blacker Wood Collection are discussed, along with the collection's founder, Dr Casey Wood. The second part of the article provides a brief examination of the movement, in some academic administrative circles, towards the ‘de-professionalization’ of librarian work within academic libraries, and offers an outline of the specialized skills that librarians bring to the description, analysis and preservation of special collections. The Taylor White Project is then offered as an example of research collaborations between scholars and librarians; a description of the advantages of embedding a scholar within specific library collections to work with, rather than replace, a librarian is provided. The author suggests this strategy as one potential answer to the question of ‘de-professionalization’, to move away from divisive discussions towards a more symbiotic relationship between scholars and librarians.

Ornithological insights from Taylor White's birds

The Taylor White Collection of paintings from the 1700s, held at the McGill University Library, includes 661 paintings that illustrate 832 birds from around the world. With illustrations of 443 species in 30 avian orders, this collection represents a substantial proportion of the bird species known at the time and is one of the most comprehensive and accurate collections of coloured bird illustrations made during the eighteenth century. Most of the paintings were made by Charles Collins and Peter Paillou from live birds or dead specimens in the cabinets and aviaries of White and his contemporaries. We compared a large sample of the paintings with the same birds depicted in modern bird guides to assess quantitatively the accuracy of the illustrations with respect to the colours and patterns of plumages and soft parts. We found that fewer than 3% of the paintings contained errors, and usually only in one of the 28 body regions that we assessed. Given this high level of accuracy, we identified a small red macaw from the West Indies as likely representing a previously unknown but now extinct subspecies of the Scarlet Macaw, and two other paintings of species that could not be convincingly matched to any known species.

Collaborating with faculty on data awareness: A case study

McGill University Library is undertaking a collaboration between three librarians and various faculty members from the Desautels Faculty of Management. The project seeks to better understand what data is available for business and finance, where that data is stored across the institution, and how its access can be better promoted and shared among the Faculty. The need to address data coverage and access was originally proposed as a project for the Faculty’s committee on Teaching and Learning Resources. The project team is made up of two Business Librarians, a Data Librarian, an Associate Professor, and a Senior Faculty Lecturer. Progress on this project has been ongoing, though significant delays were caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting closure of the McGill University campus.

A Summer in Newfoundland: Living Somewhat Locally

Research Article| February 01 2020 A Summer in Newfoundland: Living Somewhat Locally Victoria Dickenson Victoria Dickenson After a long career in museums, Victoria Dickenson has returned to first loves—old books and new histories. She is Adjunct Professor, Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University Library, specializing in the history of natural history, with an avid interest in culinary history, and a strong desire to be in the kitchen. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Gastronomica (2020) 20 (1): 69–78. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2020.20.1.69 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Victoria Dickenson; A Summer in Newfoundland: Living Somewhat Locally. Gastronomica 1 February 2020; 20 (1): 69–78. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2020.20.1.69 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentGastronomica Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2020 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions.2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Effectiveness of Vernacular Library Orientation Videos in Comparison with the English Language Equivalent

Vernacular language videos with narration in non-English languages have been used in North American academic libraries to engage and empower international and non-native English-speaking students. This study investigated the effectiveness of McGill University Library’s orientation videos from the perspective of these students, using mixed methods to outline student learning, affective responses, and views on audiovisual features used in the video. Compared to the English video, vernacular language videos are equally effective in delivering content and more adept at invoking student enthusiasm about the library. These students’ perceptions on video design and audiovisual features are useful for librarians who use videos to engage a linguistically diverse campus.

Measuring Usage: A Comprehensive Analysis of a Social Work Journal Collection

This study examines what can be learned about a library’s electronic social work journal collection from usage statistics, survey data, faculty publications, and an examination of open access (OA) availability. A collections analysis was completed using data from two sources: a custom report by 1Science and results of a faculty survey on top journals for teaching. After creating a list of journals important to social work, top journals were identified by article downloads, faculty-authored publications, and references to faculty-authored papers. A publications analysis using faculty websites and author searches in Web of Science was also completed, to provide local, contextual data. SHERPA/RoMEO was used to determine the journals’ OA level and archiving policy. Library coverage for the journals was also included in the analysis. Results show that the McGill University Library has access to almost all of the journals identified as important to social work. Nearly one-third of publications authored by the McGill University School of Social Work since 2006 are OA, and more than half of the faculty in the school have at least one article published in an OA journal. While this is a good start for librarians who want to help faculty and students understand OA publishing and access, there is room for outreach in this area. While these results will aid librarians supporting faculty, students, and practitioners in the field of social work, a secondary aim of the study is to demonstrate a method that can be used by librarians undertaking similar analyses in other fields.

Revisiting the Library of Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon’s (1737–1794) library was fundamental to his historical work and he could not have written his great history The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1778) without it. His library continues to attract interest and attention, and two documents held in Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University Library and Archives, not previously known to scholars, provide new information about the books that Gibbon owned. These are an invoice from his London bookbinder, Joseph Hall, for 1773–1776, andan invoice from his Lausanne bookseller, Jules Henri Pott, for 1793. The article provides transcriptions of these two documents, examines their contents, and discusses their importance for our understandingof Gibbon’s library.

Touch Tables for Special Collections Libraries: Curators Creating User Experiences

This article describes the implementation of touch table technology for McGill University Library’s special collections. The touch table was used by the Osler Library of the History of Medicine and the Marvin Duchow Music Library to create audiovisual exhibits to accompany traditional exhibition display cases. Each exhibition curator used a different software platform to create his or her touch table experience. This article explores the introduction of what is now a common technology in museums into the library setting and the attendant challenges, such as the need to create attractive and user-friendly experiences with limited resources and programmer time available. In particular, the article explores the library’s choices of software and hardware, providing lessons learned as well as some preliminary recommendations of best practices. It also analyzes the ways in which the touch table has proven to be an excellent addition to the library’s exhibition spaces, including its ability to unite disparate resources from multiple branch libraries, to act as a new point of librarian-faculty collaboration, and to display nontraditional items from library collections, such as recorded musical performances and archival video footage.

Exemplars: Medieval Manuscripts in Montreal and the McGill University Library Collection of Books of Hours

The Books of Hours held by the McGill University Library were mostly acquired as exemplars of medieval books for the Library Museum begun by the university librarian, Dr. Gerhard R. Lomer, in 1920. This study documents their acquisitions in the context of the acquisition of other materials for the Library Museum until 1947, when Lomer retired. It examines the context in which the Library Museum was created: the precedent set by the King’s Library at the British Museum, the Book Production Gallery of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the John Rylands Library in Manchester. In particular, the parallel with the Museum at the Art Association of Montreal established by F. Cleveland Morgan is noted. It also discusses three earlier Montreal collections that included Books of Hours: the Montreal Caxton Exhibition of 1877 and the private collections of Gerald E. Hart and J. B. Learmont. Finally, this study proposes that the Library Museum should be seen as a history of the book museum, one that traces book culture across time and civilizations.
 Prof. Gerhard R. Lomer, conservateur de la Bibliothèque de l’Université McGill, a commencé à acquérir en 1920 la plupart des Livres d’heures conservés à la Bibliothèque comme exemples de livres médiévaux pour le Musée de la Bibliothèque. Ce travail rend compte de l’acquisition des livres d’heures dans le contexte de l’acquisition d’autres types de documents pour le Musée de la Bibliothèque, jusqu’à la retraite de Lomer en 1947. Par ailleurs, ce travail examine le contexte de la création du Musée comprenant : le précédent établi par la bibliothèque du Roi au Musée Britannique; la Galerie portant sur l’histoire du livre du Musée Victoria et Albert; ainsi que la bibliothèque John Rylands à Manchester. On note le parallèle proposé par F. Cleveland Morgan avec le Musée de l’Association d’art de Montréal. Ce travail présente aussi trois collections antérieures comprenant de Livres d’heures; l’Exposition Caxton de Montréal en 1877; et les collections privées de Gerald E. Hart et J.B. Learmont. Enfin, ce travail laisse entendre que l’on doit considérer le Musée de la Bibliothèque comme une histoire des musées du livre et qui retrace la culture du livre à travers différentes périodes et civilisations.

A Foray into Fauré

The Rare Books and Special Collections department at McGill University Library holds an original manuscript of a song by Gabriel Fauré. This article discusses the cataloguing of the manuscript, including the principles of cataloguing rare material, tracing provenance, and the decision-making process commonly known as “cataloguer’s judgement.”

McGill MS 143 and the Composition of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes

This article examines the fragment of Lydgate’s poem The Fall of Princes that is McGill University Library MS 143. The fragment is part of a form of the text that survives elsewhere in a complete form only in British Library MS Harley 1766, one that is very different from the form that appears in the standard modern edition. The article discusses the ways in which the McGill fragment contributes to an understanding of the nature and significance of this variant version.

Aims and Approaches in Special Collections Assessment: A Case Study from the Osler Library

The Osler Library of the History of Medicine, a branch of the McGill University Library in Montreal, Quebec, is a research center for the history of medicine and science with significant rare book and archival holdings. As part of an institutional review launched in 2013, the Osler Library decided to look into methods of collections analysis to compile data about its collections and uncover subject strengths among items, enabling the library to better promote and communicate information about holdings to users, plan for growth, and target collections development. Collections assessment initiatives in rare books and special collections represent the coalescing . . .

The McGill library chapbook project: a case study in TEI encoding

Purpose – The purpose of this case study is to describe a multi-year text encoding initiative (TEI) project that took place in the McGill University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Design/methodology/approach – Early nineteenth century English language chapbooks from the collection were digitized, and the proofed text files were encoded in TEI, following Best Practices for TEI in Libraries (2011). Findings – The project coordinator describes the TEI file structure and customizations for the project to support a distinct subject classification of the chapbooks and the encoding of the woodcut illustrations using the Iconclass classification. Research limitations/implications – The authors focus on procedures, use of TEI data elements and encoding challenges. Practical implications – This paper documents the project workflow and provides a possible model for future digital humanities projects. Social implications – The graduate students who participated in the TEI encoding learned a new suite of skills involving extensible markup language (XML) file structure and the application of a markup language that requires interpretation. Originality/value – The McGill Library Chapbook Project Web site, launched in 2013 now provides access to 933 full-text works.

Identifying User Needs: A Case Study on Geospatial Data Requests at McGill University

Geospatial data service units in higher education are facing challenges from collection budgets, staff shortages, rapidly evolving data manipulation technologies, and increasing research and learning interests. Many units have adopted a user-centered approach to address these issues. The core of this approach is to understand what their users need. This study aims to answer this question by analyzing 455 geospatial data requests that were received and fulfilled at McGill University Library during the past two academic years. Results include which departments primarily need geospatial data, which data sets are requested most frequently, which geographic areas receive the most GIS research interest, and a distribution of request numbers over the study period. Recommendations are made about data discovery instruction and consultations, data organization and access, and data collection management based on this study’s results. Findings and recommendations may also be of use for other geospatial data units in a similar context to enhance their services.

Take a Paws: Fostering Student Wellness with a Therapy Dog Program at Your University Library

Therapy dogs are trained and socialized to provide comfort to individuals who are ill or experiencing stress. The following article explores therapy dog outreach programs in academic libraries by describing a successful venture at McGill University Library. Background, planning advice, assessment results, and recommendations are presented with an aim to inform those who would like to implement similar programs at their libraries.

McGill Library Makes E-books Portable: E-reader Loan Service in a Canadian Academic Library

E-readers are increasingly popular personal devices, but can they be effectively used for the needs of academic libraries’ clients? This paper employs an evidence-based approach that examines the role and efficacy of implementing an E-reader Loan Service at McGill University Library. Suggestions are offered as to what lending model and device features best meet client needs. Observations are made based on the lessons learned from active use. The paper also examines relevant issues, such as electronic formats, Digital Rights Management, and the role of e-readers as library technology that facilitates the ideals of mobile learning.

Osler Under 40

Osler Under 40