Tag Archives: librarians

Studying at the McGill Library: Expectations vs Reality

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When I started my first year at McGill, I had many presumptions about a library and its uses. I had a clear picture in my head of what the McGill Library would be; a quiet place to study surrounded by barely used books. However, after visiting the libraries and seeing the atmosphere, my expectations of the Library were off. Here is a short list of a few expectations possibly many other students have about studying at McGill, compared to the reality of it all!

The Methods of Research

Growing up, students were often told stories about the “good old days” by their parents. One variation of these stories was that they would have to physically go to a library to research for their projects, scanning through hundreds of books to find the perfect source. This deemed libraries as old-fashioned and useless now that we can access search engines like Google.

After studying for a few months at the McGill Library, it is clear that this is only sometimes the case. Although we do still have access to the thousands of valuable books within the libraries, we also have access to so many more sources. Students can access many resources through the McGill Library website, such as ebooks, videos, articles, guides, and more! No matter the project, the Library makes it easy for students to find exactly what they want.

The Librarians

In fiction, librarians are often portrayed in a mostly negative way. They’re just the strict old ladies that shush everyone in sight. These depictions are seen in most television programs, causing students to dislike these workers when they go to the Library. Librarians, however, are not at all like this. In reality, the librarians at McGill are the complete opposite! They care about all of their students and are always there to help. Whether it be to find the right resource, check out a book, or get help with a paper, the various librarians at the McGill Library ensure that students have a sound support system in their academic journey.

The Different Aspects of the Library

Although I have already mentioned the expectations of the research done within a library, there are also notable differences regarding the reality of the role of a library itself. Many people believe that the only thing a library is used for is studying and researching for projects.

The McGill Library offers many events and fun things for students and the community. These include monthly activities, such as Game Nights, various workshops on a multitude of topics, hosting events, and many more! There is always something interesting going on in the Library, making it much more purposeful than we make it out to be.

Study Spaces

Lastly, it is often expected that libraries are tranquil places to study. Students are usually limited to complete silence so as not to disturb people around them, making it difficult for people who prefer to study in a busier environment or want to do group projects with their peers.

To allow for a wider variety of study spaces, the McGill Library offers various study spaces for students to choose from. Whether you prefer complete silence, an area with some talking or a private room to study with your friends, the Library has you covered! Many Study Spaces are available for students all over campus, so you’re sure to find the perfect one for you!

Meet Your Winter 2023 HSSL Liaison Librarians!

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With the beginning of the Winter 2023 semester, one building on campus has started to fill up again; the Humanities and Social Sciences Library! The incredible staff has worked hard to make the library a welcoming and community-minded space for all of McGill. As the semester has started to pick up in pace, schoolwork has begun to pile up and completing assignments can be overwhelming. The HSSL Liaison Librarians are here to help!

Liaison Librarians serve the entirety of the McGill community. Each with their own Subject Guides for your specific field of study, Liaison Librarians help you find the best databases for your assignments, projects, and papers.

An extensive list of the HSSL Library staff, including your Library Liaisons, can be found here. This semester, there are 11 Liaison Librarians serving the McGill community. Figuring out which one to contact for your field can be difficult, but it doesn’t need to be!

Here are this semester’s Liaison Librarians, all ready to help you with any questions you may have:

Tatiana Bedjanian

Tatiana is our Liaison Librarian for Russian Studies, German Language & Literature, Linguistics, the School of Continuing Studies’ Intensive English Program, and the Writing Centre.

email | 514-398-7383

Eamon Duffy

Eamon is our Liaison Librarian for Government Information.

email | 514-398-4697

David Greene

David is our Liaison Librarian for the Department of Art History & Communication Studies, the School of Architecture, and the School of Urban Planning.

email | 514-398-5925

Kristen Howard

Kristen is our Liaison Librarian for History and Classical Studies, Indigenous Studies, and the School of Religious Studies.

email | 514-398-5500

Marcela Y. Isuster

Marcela is our Liaison Librarian for Hispanic Studies, Information Studies, and Kinesiology & Physical Education.

email | 514-398-4729

Dawn McKinnon

Dawn is our Liaison Librarian for Management and Business.

email | 514-398-5499

Michael David Miller

Michael David is our Liaison Librarian for French Literature, Economics, International Development, Public Policy, Political Science, Quebec Studies, Translation Studies, and Women’s, Feminist, Gender & LGBTQ+ Studies.

email | 514-398-7440

Sharon Rankin

Sharon is our Liaison Librarian for Children’s & Young Adult Literature, Education, Post-Secondary Education, Maps, Teacher Education, and Teaching & Learning Services.

email | 514-398-6657

Nikki Tummon

Nikki is our Liaison Librarian for Social Work, Anthropology, and Sociology.

email | 514-398-5727

Lonnie Weatherby

Lonnie is our Liaison Librarian for English, American & Canadian Literatures, Film & Cultural Studies, Italian Studies, Philosophy, and Reference Collection.

email | 514-398-5031

Amanda Wheatley

Amanda is our Liaison Librarian for Management, Business, and Entrepreneurship.

email | 514-398-3921

Meet Your Humanities and Social Sciences Liaison Librarians

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Being back on campus has been so great! There have been reunions within the stacks, a new library space app Waitz, and most importantly, the friendly staff of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library have made the space feel like a second home again. As we head move forward in the semester and assignments are starting to pick up, there’s no better time to check in with your Liaison Librarian.

With such a variety of scholarly topics covered at McGill, each department has a Liaison Librarian who specializes in their field of study. There are 13 Liaison’s in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library that support arts, education, and management programs.

Liaisons can help you find the best resources for your project or paper; their help extends to the entire McGill community. You can find the rest of the HSSL Library staff here which includes your Library Liaisons. (Tip: for quick search, key ctrl+f and search the topic of interest).

Hear from some of our Liaison Librarians about this library resource:

Tatiana Bedjanian

A blonde haired woman smiles at the camera, her hair is shoulder length with a slight curl at the end and she is wearing frameless glasses.

Tatiana is a Liaison Librarian for Russian Studies, German Language & Literature, Linguistics, the School of Continuing Studies’ Intensive English Program, and the Writing Centre. Her favourite book is The Demons by Dostoevsky

“Liaison Librarians are the primary Libraries’ contacts for faculty and students. By providing specialized subject expertise in their academic disciplines, they support teaching, learning, and research and help navigate a rapidly changing information landscape“

Eamon Duffy

A man with short brown hair is giving a closed lip smile. He can be seen from the neck up and is wearing two-tone coloured glasses.

Eamon is a Liaison Librarian for History, Classical Studies, and Government Information. His favourite book is Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas.

“As far as what I have learned about my subjects I would say that historians look at everything. There isn’t any kind of documentation that wouldn’t have some value as a primary source in the right context.”

David Greene

A young man with short curly brown hair and a bear is smiling at the camera. He can be seen from the chest up and is standing in front of a bookshelf.

David is a Liaison Librarian for the Department of Art History & Communication Studies, the School of Architecture, and the School of Urban Planning. His favourite book is Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.

“We get to help with all kinds of projects. One of the strangest involved running a 3D printing and virtual reality space in the library’s Innovation Commons.“

Sandy Hervieux

A young woman with curly red hair is smiling at the camera. She has on bright red lipstick and can be seen from the chest up. She is standing in front of a bookshelf.

Sandy is a Liaison Librarian for Political Science, Philosophy, Public Policy, and the School of Religious Studies. His favourite book is The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E Schwab.

“I can help students find sources for your assignments and research projects. This means helping with creating a strong search strategy, finding primary and secondary sources (such as academic articles), and evaluating the information. The Library has a multitude of sources so it’s not always easy to know where to search, that’s something I can help with as well.”

Marcela Y. Isuster

A young woman with long, wavy brown hair is smiling with closed lips at the camera. She has large black glasses and can be seen from the chest up. She is standing in front of a bookshelf.

Marcela is a Liaison Librarian for Hispanic Studies, Information Studies, and Kinesiology & Physical Education.

“One of the things I like the most about being a liaison is how I much I learn about the subjects I work with from discovering new musical movements in Colombia to better understanding decolonizing pedagogy to exploring respiratory training for hockey goalies. No two days are the same and I am always learning new things”

Emily Kingsland

A young woman with long black hair is smiling at the camera. She is wearing a bright fuscia shirt and is standing in front of a bookshelf.

Emily is a Liaison Librarian for Educational & Counselling Psychology, and Psychology. Her favourite book is Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

“My favourite part of my role as the liaison librarian to the Department of Psychology and the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology is that I’m able to collaborate with professors and students on systematic reviews and scoping reviews. I love being able to guide them through the process of selecting the right databases for their research question and building elaborate search strategies together. It’s so satisfying when I’m able to see their reviews in print and know that I had a hand in informing research, practice, and policy.“

Dawn McKinnon

A woman with shoulder length, wavy brown hair is smiling at the camera. She can be seen from the neck up and is standing in front of a book shelf.

Dawn is a Liaison Librarian for Management and Business. Her favourite books are The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, and Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell.

“It makes me happy when I can help students become excited and engaged with their subject areas, so that they learn to love learning, which will hopefully continue after graduation. Also Business students love competition which makes the games we play in class really fun.“

Michael David Miller

A young man smiles at the camera, his dark hair is pouffed up on the top of his head and he is wearing a bright blue scarf. He has rectangular, black framed glasses.

Michael David is a Liaison Librarian for French Literature, Economics, International Development, Public Policy, Translation Studies, and Women’s, Feminist, Gender & LGBTQ+ Studies His favourite book is is En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule (original French) / The End of Eddy (English translation) by Édouard Louis.

“I work closely with all of my subject areas. In French literature I teach a five-part seminar series at the undergraduate level and a seminar in the methodology courses at the Master and PhD level. In Genders, Sexuality and Feminist Studies (GSFS), I give seminars on a few courses on writing literature revies and finding GSFS materials. In Economics, I recently had the opportunity to develop a workshop for a graduate level methodology course on finding economic data sets. In Public Policy, my colleague Sandy Hervieux and I participate in orientation activities and are developing a workshop to help students next semester search for grey literature for their final policy projects.”

Sharon Rankin

A woman smiles at the camera with closed lips. She is wearing half-rimmed glasses with her long hair in a half-up do. Behind her you can see trees and the forest floor.

Sharon is a Liaison Librarian for Children’s & Young Adult Literature, Education, Post-Secondary Education, Maps, Teacher Education, and Teaching & Learning Services. Her favourite book is box set of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses.

“My most interesting project was undertaken for the Marvin Duchow Music Library, who received a donation of organ plans from a Montreal-base organ builder named Hellmuth Wolff. It was a challenge to organize, describe and preserve such large and fragile documents. It took the best part of a year and with the assistance of several McGill Music students.“

Nikki Tummon

A woman is smiling toward the side of the frame. Her short golden-brown hair rests at her shoulders and her bangs are swept across the side of her forehead.

Nikki is a Liaison Librarian for Social Work, Anthropology, Indigenous Studies, and Sociology. Her favourite book is the children’s book of poems Garbage Delight by Dennis Lee.

“In my liaison areas I frequently interact with faculty members and teaching staff as well as students. For faculty, I offer support in collection development, resource access, and teaching. I also answer scholarly publishing questions and research queries and assist with search strategy formulation for specific projects and research groups.”

Lonnie Weatherby

A man with short gray hair is smiling up at the camera from his desk. His right arm is outstretched toward the keybaord and behind him are lots of old books.

Lonnie is a Liaison Librarian for English, American & Canadian Literatures, Film & Cultural Studies, Italian Studies, and Reference Collection. His favourite books are The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A.N. Wilson, and The bookseller of Florence by Ross King.

“I like selecting books in English, American, Canadian and Italian literature for the Library collection and selecting films for our DVD collection. I enjoy interacting and conferring with the students, the faculty in the English and Italian Departments and with my colleagues.”

Amanda Wheatley

A young woman smiles at the camera, viewable from the neck and shoulders up. Her wavy brown hair is loose around her shoulders and she stands in front of a wall of green leaves.

Amanda is a Liaison Librarian for Management, Business, and Entrepreneurship. Her favourite book is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern 

“I enjoy being a Liaison Librarian because it gives me a chance to connect to the students and faculty at the university. I get to help them on their research journey and show them resources they might not have known about otherwise.”

Macy Zheng

A woman with shoulder length black hair smiles at the camera while holding a large book open. She has frameless glasses and is wearing a lanyard. Behind her is a bookshelf.

Macy is a Liaison Librarian for East Asian Studies. Her favourite book is Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel by Lisa See

“There’s this quote by Jon Jeffryes ‘Every time someone apologizes for reaching out for research help I want to say: This is the best part of the job!’

I totally agree with what Jon Jeffryes said. It is one of liaison librarians’ essential duties to help students and faculty with their learning and research, and we should encourage them to ask us any questions for help.”