LivingWorks: Suicide intervention training that works
The LivingWorks Start program for suicide intervention is worth doing because a greater understanding of how to support someone who is thinking of completing suicide might help save a life.
Animal therapy or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the quarantine
From therapy animals to household pets to wildlife, many of us know firsthand the power that animals have to improve our mood and add healthy behaviours to our lives. Especially during a crisis.
No Fool’s Day
We at Open Shelf didn’t publish an April Fool’s issue .. now is not the time for pranks, even those focused on satirical articles, short stories and mystery podcasts. What do people (readers) need right now? Positivity and something to do.
COVID-19: Academic library tales from the (home) front
We invite our members to share advice and stories from the COVID-19 outbreak and the closure of most academic libraries across Ontario.
Note to self: Schedule time for self-care
We schedule a lot to do or are scheduled to do a lot. One thing that may be missing from our agendas is self-care.
Beguiling grief: Receiving positive support for loss in the workplace
Acknowledging grief in the workplace is critical to building trust and to ensuring that staff members can respond to the loss of a colleague in a healthy and a productive way.
I get by with a little help from my friends [colleagues]
By Melanie Parlette-Stewart “If you’ve created a work culture where vulnerability isn’t okay, you’ve also created a culture where innovation and creativity aren’t okay.”…
Are you stressed? Boosting resiliency at work
As library staff, we all deal with stressful situations such as a person haggling over $1.50 in fines shrinking budgets and rising costs. Whether we're up north or down south, reflection and sleep can boost our resiliency and stress-wrangling capacity.
InsideOCULA newsletter: October 2018
The arrival of autumn, and especially this Thanksgiving weekend, is always a time of beginnings and endings: perfect for reflecting on our successes and preparing for the challenges to come. This issue of InsideOCULA, which celebrates library projects both old and new, captures the spirit of fall.
InsideOCULA newsletter: July 2018
With the arrival of summer, many of us will be looking forward to holidays, but summer months spent at work can also be a useful time to revisit projects or start new ones. In this month’s issue of InsideOCULA, we look back at past successes and highlight renewed projects from the OCULA community.
An ode to summer from an academic librarian: OCULA president’s message
By Melanie Parlette-Stewart “I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.”—L. M. Montgomery, Anne of…
Catching some Zen at Cambrian College Library
By Marnie Seal Have you ever wanted to catch some “zen” throughout your day, but just found the environment around you a little too…
Snapshot from OLA SuperConference 2015: Suffering from Library Anxiety?
Library and information studies (LIS) students might seem like an unlikely group of people to suffer from library anxiety. However, a popular poster presentation…