This work-in-progress presentation analyzes the current conditions of librarian labour via an analysis of Collective Agreements (CA) in Canadian university libraries. This research project follows in the footsteps of Highs and Lows: An Examination of Academic Librarians’ Collective Agreements by Harrington and Gerolami, published a decade ago. While that chapter focused on a subset of 15 universities across Canada, we are expanding the analysis to include a broader range of universities.

In this project we are asking two main questions:
• How are academic librarians and their work represented in collective agreements?
• How has that representation changed over time?

We will share the results of our literature review, the decisions we have made about which universities to include in the analysis, and our plan for the future of this research and why we think it is timely and important. We will also share the challenges of this type of work, including Collective Agreement interpretation versus labour conditions in practice, and the availability of historical agreements.