Sharon Rankin

Education

• MLIS, McGill University, 1981
• Honours Year, Sociology, Dalhousie University, 1978
• BSc, Psychology, Dalhousie University, 1977

Areas of interest

• Canadian Inuit Periodicals: A Bibliography of Canadian Inuit Periodicals: CanInuit is an annotated source of information about the magazines, journals, newspapers and newsletters of Canada's Inuit peoples and communities. Each entry in the CanInuit database refers to a periodical publication which deals predominantly with Canadian Inuit and their communities. In 2011, A Bibliography of Canadian Inuit Periodicals was published by UQAM Press.
• Touch table technology & special collections: Two Innovation in Service awards from the Dean of Libraries have supported the purchase of Ideum touch tables, which are being used for special collections exhibitions created with Intuiface software.

• TEI and the McGill Library Chapbook Collection: This a text encoding project in Rare Books and Special Collections involving the creation of a TEI XML file for each of the digitized chapbooks using TEI P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange by the TEI Consortium. Level 4 coding from Best Practices for TEI in Libraries was used to enable future functionality using the encoded TEI file. The woodcuts in each chapbook were assigned a classification code from the Iconclass thesaurus. The McGill Library Chapbook Collection can be viewed at http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/chapbooks/index.php

• International Polar Year (IPY) grant entitled "Entendre et communiquer les voix du Nunavik/ Hearing and sharing the voices of Nunavik”: This project brought together three cultural communities (Inuktitut, French and English) in a unique partnership between Makivik Corporation, the Université du Québec à Montréal and McGill University in cooperation with the Avataq Cultural Institute, to provide a focus on the written heritage of Nunavik that meets the requirements of the communities in this region and that is totally in line with the education, dissemination and popularization efforts of International Polar Year. 

• Saint Columba House - Library and Learning Centre Project, Montreal: The Library and Learning Centre was created for the children in the Alternate School, After-School and Teen programs to promote literacy for children who are often underexposed to literature, and to empower them to develop the skills they need to appreciate and embrace the written word. An online catalogue was created for the Saint Columba House Library collection.

Google Scholar Profile

ORCID ID public page

Selected papers and presentations

Rankin, S. (2022), A bibliography of Canadian Inuit periodicals: a case study in Omeka.net migration. Digital Library Perspectives, 38(2), 135-145. https://doi.org/10.1108/DLP-06-2020-0054

Dysert, A., Rankin, S., & Wagner, D. N. (2018). Touch tables for special collections libraries: Curators creating user experiences. RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, 19(1), 41-58. https://doi.org/10.5860/rbm.19.1.41

Hulley, K., & Rankin, S. (2018). Preserving and sharing the popular music of the past: A case study in conservation of a nineteenth-century sheet music collection. Music Reference Services Quarterly, 122-143. https://doi.org/10.1080/10588167.2018.1453177

Rankin, S., & Lees, C. (2015). The McGill library chapbook project: a case study in TEI encoding. OCLC Systems & Services: International digital library perspectives, 31(3), 134-143. https://doi.org/10.1108/OCLC-07-2014-0030

Swanick, S., Rankin, S., & Reinhart, M. (2015). Curating exhibitions in academic libraries: Practical steps. Practical Academic Librarianship: The International Journal of the SLA Academic Division, 5(2), 1-22. https://journals.tdl.org/pal/index.php/pal/article/view/7011

Rankin, S. (2011). A Bibliography of Canadian Inuit Periodicals. Montreal: UQAM Press. 279 pages.

Rankin, S. et al. (2010). The Moravian beginnings of Canadian Inuit Literature: an exhibition of special collections from McGill University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, February to April 2009. Montreal; Hanover [NH]: IPI Press. 111 pages.

Rankin, S. (2010). Caninuit: A new web resource for Canadian Inuit periodicals. In Campbell, S. & Maloney, E. (Eds.) Polar Libraries Colloquy  (22^nd: 2008: Edmonton, Alta.), (pp 135-152). Edmonton: CCI Press.

Rankin, S. et al. (2009). The Moravian beginnings of Canadian Inuit Literature. Montreal: McGill University Library. [Brochure]. 19 pages.

Rankin, S. (2008). Canadian Inuit newspapers and periodicals: Past, present and future. In Walraven, H. (Ed.) The impact of digital technology on contemporary and historic newspapers, (pp 171-184). Munich: K.G. Saur (IFLA Publications; 135).