Coast to Coast

1
Coast to Coast

• (or, how a Nova Scotia good ole boy
  ended up in Lotusland)

Hansel Cook
LIBR 500 Foundations of Information Technology
2
Careers
Like many people in Library School, this was not
my first choice of career. At various times in my
life I wanted to be
A Spaceman (age 8)
A Gourmet Chef (age 16)
A Diplomat (age 22)
A Software Engineer (age 26)
3
University The Early Years
My first year of higher education was at The
University of Kings College in Halifax, where I
took the Foundation Year Program. It was an
intensive classical education where we read
Homer, Dante, Plato, Saint Augustine, etc
(Click picture to go to Kings web site)
4
The Early Years, cont.
Unfortunately, at age 18 I couldnt really
appreciate much of what I was reading, and most
of my knowledge of philosophy today comes from
MONTY PYTHON!
5
The Dark Ages
After my sophomore year of University I didnt
really have a plan for my future, and ended up
taking a year off. During that time I worked at
the evil empire, which we fondly knew as
6
Renaissance

• Needless to say, I had no trouble to get up the
  motivation to return to school, this time to work
  on a Political Science degree at Dalhousie
  University. My areas of specialty included
• Canadian Foreign Policy
• Peacekeeping and the Military
• Foreign Aid
• International Politics
• The United Nations
• Diplomatic Theory

7
My First Library Experience
I began working in the University Library after
my return to school. I worked as a student
assistant in several library departments,
including

• Conservation

• Government Documents

• Circulation

• Special Collections

• and the University Archives

8
The Archives
After graduation I continued to work in the
university archives while I took classes part
time, trying to think what I would do next with
my life
and as they say, life is what happens while you
are waiting for life to happen. My part time job
turned into a full time staff position. After the
archivists retirement in the summer of 1999 I
was made Acting University Archivist, a job I had
little training for, but I was the only one who
knew where to find anything.
9
The Archives (cont.)
The job was very interesting. I gained experience
in database and web design, learned how to be a
good manager, and developed my public relations
skills. I also worked with several university
librarians and faculty on a major electronic text
project.
(Click picture to see the Archives web page I
designed.)
10
Onward and Upward
I enjoyed working in a library, and having gone
as far as I could with my bachelors degree an
MLIS seemed like a logical next step. But which
school was right for me?

• Dalhousie University? (not enough of a change)

• University of Toronto? (too Upper Canadian)

• University of Alberta? (too flat)

11
Why UBC?

• It had a school that seemed to emphasize
  professional experience over theory

• Its located in one of the most beautiful cities
  in Canada (second only to Halifax, of course)

• It has just about the lowest tuition in Canada

• But most of all, its near the water which means

12
Sailing!
(above Yours truly sailing Bear, a CC 27, in
Halifax Harbour during Tall Ships 2000.)
13
And so it was
in early December, 2001, I flew from Halifax to
Vancouver. So far I have no regrets
(the end)