RULA sends warmest congratulations to Ryerson President Sheldon Levy, who was honoured on Monday with the Egerton Ryerson Award for Dedication to Public Education. From People for Education:

The Egerton Ryerson Award is presented annually to a person or persons who have been both active and public in their advocacy for strong public education. The award recognizes the deep value of learning – from the early years until graduation from high school, and those who have made the connection between strong public education, social cohesion, and strong and engaged societies.

While attending the gala, RULA’s Chief Librarian Madeleine Lefebvre had the chance to talk to the Honourable Bill Davis, former Premier of Ontario (see photo, right). Mr Davis was on hand as a member of the awards committee to pay tribute to President Levy and chatted with Madeleine about the Library and the soon-to-be opened Student Learning Centre.

President Levy has been a tireless supporter of the library throughout his tenure as Toronto Metropolitan University’s President. Our heartfelt congratulations on your recognition!

The Library is pleased to report the addition of more than two hundred monographs and pamphlets by way of a private donation. This donation brings the Library’s holdings to over 3,700 books, pamphlets, DVDs and video recordings relating to the Caribbean.

The donation includes an impressive variety of titles including a literary criticism on the poetry of Aimé Césaire, a discourse on Rastafarian music in contemporary Jamaica, and an economic history of Puerto Rico. The oldest item is Edgar Mayhew Bacon and Eugene Murray Aaron’s 1890 treatise The New Jamaica: Describing the Island, Explaining its Conditions of Life and Growth and Discussing Its Mercantile Relations and Potential Importance.  Several works date from the early 21st century including Talk Stories by Jamaica Kincaid and Jennie Marcelle Smith’s When the Hands are Many: Community Organization and Social Change in Rural Haiti. Historians, literary scholars, sociologists, and multi-disciplinary scholars interested in migration studies or postcolonial issues will all find something of interest in this new acquisition.

For additional tips on finding Caribbean Studies resources at RULA, check out the guide for CHST222: History of the Caribbean and the general Caribbean Studies Guide. For more information about the donation, or to learn more about the Library’s Caribbean Studies collection, contact the subject liaison for Caribbean Studies, Val Lem.

        

The Department of Geography and Environmental Studies and
the Library’s Geospatial Map and Data Centre present

GIS Day at Ryerson

19 November 2014, 1pm-5pm, LIB489

We welcome Ryerson students, faculty, and staff, and the local community to a celebration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) research and applications on this year’s global GIS Day.
The event takes place on the 4^th floor of the Toronto Metropolitan University Library & Archives, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto.

Keynote presentations (approx. half an hour each):

1:30pm            Gillian Woolmer – Assistant Director, Wildlife Conservation Society Canada

2:30pm            Harvey Low – Manager, Social Policy Analysis & Research, City of Toronto

3:30pm            Tony Lea – Senior Vice President and Chief Methodologist, Environics Analytics

Research & project exhibits:

Live demos

– Scholar’s GeoPortal and SimplyMap (Dan Jakubek and Noel Damba, Ryerson Library/GMDC)

– QGIS, OpenStreetMap, and “Geo for All” (Claus Rinner and Eric Vaz, Ryerson/Geography)

– The Neptis Geoweb – Engagement by Visualization (Vishan Guyadeen, Neptis Foundation)

– Thought Spot – A Crowdsourced Map of Health and Wellness Services for Students (Heather Hart, Ryerson/Geography & Centre for Addiction and Mental Health)

Posters

A selection of recent conference posters by Ryerson faculty and students:

– GIS application examples in the Toronto area

– Geography Awareness Week and the BA in Geographic Analysis

Student course work exhibits:

Slideshows

– Draft project presentations from SA8904, GIS Project Management, Master of Spatial Analysis

– Draft map posters from SA8905, Thematic Cartography and Geovisualization, Master of Spatial Analysis

 

A light snack will be available starting at 2pm.