Dear Santa, We’re the Open Shelf editorial team. Our favourite things to do are to engage with our friends in the OLA community. We write, we provide feedback, we get creative with pictures and tweets, we play tag all the time, and just basically have lots of fun. We’ll be snuggled at home during the holiday season, hopefully taking a break from work but still dreaming of new stories we can tell in Open Shelf in 2021. Although this has been a crazy year—the “Year of COVID”—we’ve still been able to play with our Open Shelf contributors and they have sent us lots of great stories to print in the magazine.

What’s new in Open Shelf: March 2020
We’re trying something new this month: An online panel discussion on the need for the MLIS.
In addition to this foray into a new way to talk with each other, we also have a number of features that look at Finnish library programs, Indigenous-federal relations, being a new manager, and creative card-making for students, which is an InsideOCULA article.
Plus, Readers’ advisory is back along with the latest installment of Wildcard*, a new grad’s journey in the job market.
Why did the Romanian stop reading? To give their Bucharest!
- Librarians require an MLIS: True or false?
- Finnish public libraries integrate diverse services to support equity and inclusion
- Wildcard*: Solving the child care riddle
- Connecting students to seniors: channelling exam stress into creative card-making at U of T Libraries
- Readers’ advisory: “What are you reading?”
- Three pieces of advice for new managers
- Taking responsibility: An information-seeking journey to understanding Indigenous-federal relations
Finally, find out what Andrea Cecchetto (OLA president) and Shelagh Paterson (OLA executive director) think about our collective goals and priorities for 2020. And please take our poll: Along with our panellists, you can vote on whether librarians should have an MLIS or not!
Joke: For reading addicts