KO Staff Attend Library Association Super Conference 2003
Six representatives working with the Smart Communities demonstration project traveled to Toronto to take in this year’s 100th Annual Conference of the Ontario Library Association’s Super Conference 2003. This January 30 - February 1, 2003 event is the highlight gathering of librarians, associations, exhibitors and everyone who meet to share, plan and create new opportunities for libraries across the country.
Each of the KO First Nation reps (Madeleine Stoney - Fort Severn, Raymond Mason - Keewaywin, Darlene Rae - North Spirit Lake, Corey Meekis - Deer Lake) are taking on the challenge of establishing public libraries in their local e-Centres. Susan Owen from Poplar Hill is coordinating this work for her community but was unable to attend this event. Les Meekis, the KO Smart project’s Community Manager, is supporting this development in partnership with other organizations (Ontario Library Services North and the OLA). Brian Beaton was invited to do a presentation in the Saturday session entitled “Building the 21st Century Community: Communities and Libraries Working Together”. Co-presenters in the session were Carrol Lunau and Mary Cavanagh who are both working on developing the Smart@Library initiative for the SmartCapital project in Ottawa.
The conference is a great opportunity to meet other people involved in developing and supporting public libraries in Ontario. The exhibitions and sessions attended all proved to be valuable experiences for networking with others, learning about and discovering new contacts and resources for the development of these public libraries in remote First Nations across Ontario.
The KO team was able to meet with the Telecommons Development Group (TDG) during this trip to further plan the upcoming Community Engagement Workshops and next year’s project evaluation and final report. Don Richarson, Helen Aitken and Galin Kora traveled from Guelph to work with these members of the Smart team for on Friday morning.