Programming & Hours: September – December 2026
We are closed September 7 (Labour Day), Monday October 12 (Thanksgiving), Thursday, December 24, 2026 – Wednesday, January 6, 2027 (Winter Break). For full schedule of Library Building hours: https://library.torontomu.ca/info/hours/
The Library Collaboratory is staffed Monday – Friday (9:30 AM – 4:30 PM).
Please note: The Library Collaboratory entrance is affected by the SLC Building’s hours. Please plan accordingly. TMU Libraries’ Collaboratory is open for access from:
September 7 to December 11, 2026
- Monday to Friday: 7:00 AM – 1:00 AM*
- Saturday and Sunday: 10:00 AM – 1:00 AM
- Monday, December 14 – Friday, December 18
December 12 – December 23, 2026:
- Saturday, December 12: 8:00 AM – 1:00 AM & Sunday, December 13: 10:00 AM – 1:00 AM
- Monday, December 14 – Friday, December 18: 7:00 AM – 1:00 AM
- Saturday, December 19: 8:00 AM – 7:00 PM & Sunday, December 20: 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
- Monday, December 21 – Tuesday, December 22: 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM & Wednesday, December 23: 8:30 AM – 4:30 PM
- CLOSED from December 24 – January 6
Be sure to check our calendar for all other scheduled programs and closures not listed here.
Workshops are offered throughout the semester, some in-person only and some online only.
* Appointments for consultation may only be made by members of the Library Collaboratory.
Research consultations are available for Library Collaboratory members. If you are not a member, and interested in becoming one, learn more about membership here.
If you are a faculty member getting new research off the ground, contact us about training and in-kind support.
Workshops
November
Design Drawing Crash Course, Part 1: Fundamentals | Friday, November 13 | 3:00 – 4:00 PM | IN-PERSON
Design drawing is a way for designers to communicate ideas to fellow designers, manufacturers and marketers. A good design drawing does more than show what something will look like. It starts a conversation and invites feedback before anything is made, as well as during prototyping, rather than presenting a design as final.
This peer-to-peer learning workshop introduces the principles and conventions behind clear, effective design drawings, regardless of medium. Topics include line weight, image layout and page positioning, callouts and annotations, perspective and scale, and the progression from low- to high-fidelity drawings (from ideation sketches to final renderings). Participants will leave with a take-home exercise: choose an object from your kitchen or closet and draw it using what you have learned.
This workshop is the first of a three-part peer-to-peer learning series.
This peer-to-peer learning workshop series introduces the fundamentals of the craft: first core principles that apply to any medium, then traditional methods, then digital methods. Throughout, participants will learn to treat drawing as a way to open up dialogue, not close it.
Participants do not need to register for all three parts, though they are strongly encouraged to begin with Workshop 1. Workshops 2 and 3 will begin with a short review of key fundamentals.
Text Mining and Topic Modelling with Orange 3 | Wednesday, November 18 | 5:00 – 7:00 PM | ONLINE
Join this hands-on walkthrough workshop to learn how text mining and topic modelling and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) can streamline components of your research process with the help of the open-source tool, Orange 3.
In this peer-to-peer learning workshop, you will learn how guest instructor Zahra, a TMU Professional Communication graduate student, is actively using topic modelling in her own research.
Participants will learn how text analysis capabilities of Orange 3 can speed up literature reviews by analyzing papers without getting bogged down in manual reviews.
Using a case study of “binge-watching,” participants will be shown how to use this tool to efficiently uncover the core themes and topics within large volumes of text and research data.
No technical or previous experience is required.
Design Drawing Crash Course, Part 2: Traditional Basics | Friday, November 20 | 3:00 – 5:00 PM | IN-PERSON
Design drawing is a way for designers to communicate ideas to fellow designers, manufacturers and marketers. A good design drawing does more than show what something will look like. It starts a conversation and invites feedback before anything is made, as well as during prototyping, rather than presenting a design as final.
This workshop builds on the fundamentals learned in the previous workshop, with hands-on traditional techniques. Participants will start with warm-up exercises (circles and lines, drawing from the shoulder rather than the wrist), then explore underlays and light boards, quick sketching versus traditional rendering, perspective, shading, and how to achieve patterns and textures quickly with colour pencils and markers. Participants will also look at how to choose materials, including coloured pencils, pens, alcohol markers, and marker paper or cardstock.
This workshop is the second installment of a three-part peer-to-peer learning series.
This peer-to-peer learning workshop series introduces the fundamentals of the craft: first core principles that apply to any medium, then traditional methods, then digital methods. Throughout, participants will learn to treat drawing as a way to open up dialogue, not close it.
Participants do not need to register for all three parts, though they are strongly encouraged to begin with Workshop 1. Workshops 2 and 3 will begin with a short review of key fundamentals.
December
Design Drawing Crash Course, Part 3: Digital Design | Friday, December 4 | 3 – 5 PM | IN-PERSON
Design drawing is a way for designers to communicate ideas to fellow designers, manufacturers and marketers. A good design drawing does more than show what something will look like. It starts a conversation and invites feedback before anything is made, as well as during prototyping, rather than presenting a design as final.
This workshop introduces digital drawing tools. We will explore perspective, using the human figure to establish scale, cel shading, creating patterns and textures digitally, incorporating sourced images into drawings, and adding callouts and text in a secondary program such as Adobe Illustrator. The instructor will demonstrate using Sketchbook on iPad and Adobe Illustrator on a computer. The techniques are transferable, so participants who prefer other programs, such as Procreate, can follow along and apply what they learn in those tools.
This workshop is the last installment of a three-part peer-to-peer learning series.
This peer-to-peer learning workshop series introduces the fundamentals of the craft: first core principles that apply to any medium, then traditional methods, then digital methods. Throughout, participants will learn to treat drawing as a way to open up dialogue, not close it.
Participants do not need to register for all three parts, though they are strongly encouraged to begin with Workshop 1. Workshops 2 and 3 will begin with a short review of key fundamentals.