Each year, ACCOLEDS (A COPPUL Consortium of Library Electronic Data Services) holds a workshop on various aspects of data librarianship over three days in late November.  This year’s workshop, ACCOLEDS 2012, will be held in Winnipeg, Manitoba on November 27-29.

The program coordinators for ACCOLEDS 2012 annually sponsor one student from each library school in the Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL) region to attend the workshop, and this includes students at SLAIS.  Since 1996, the annual ACCOLEDS workshops have been sponsored by Statistics Canada’s Data Liberation Initiative (DLI), and this sponsorship covers travel, accommodation and meal costs for attending students. 

Data librarianship is an exciting and dynamic field, and attending ACCOLEDS 2012 is an excellent way for interested students to learn about primary Canadian socio-economic data sources and the work of data librarians in post-secondary institutions.  Students interested in social science, GIS, or government documents librarianship may find this opportunity particularly useful.

For more information and background, please see the following:

• The ACCOLEDS 2012 program at http://datalib.library.ualberta.ca/accoleds.
• The DLI web site at http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-ild/dli-idd-eng.htm.
• The 2010/2011 DLI Annual Report at http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-ild/doc/ar10-11-eng.pdf.

You will be expected to attend the entire three-day workshop (November 27-29). This may conflict with final classes and assignments, depending on your course schedule.

SLAIS students are encouraged to nominate themselves for this funding. Here is the procedure:

•              Write a brief statement (maximum one page) demonstrating your interest in social science, GIS, government documents or data librarianship. Include a discussion of how you have demonstrated, if applicable, leadership in your activities at SLAIS.

•              Include a resume

•              Email the documents to Debra Locke by 9 a.m. Thursday, October 4, 2012.

Note, an interest in these areas is helpful but not required. You are welcome to use this as an opportunity to further explore this as a career. It’s a terrific networking and learning experience and will be a strong addition to your resume as well. And you won’t get the award if you don’t apply.