In the Canadian context, there is a notable dearth of professional literature focusing on racial minority librarians conducted by racial minority librarians. To address this gap, a team of six  librarians, representing the Visible Minority Librarians of Canada (ViMLoC) network, undertook a second comprehensive survey in 2021, building on the initial survey conducted in 2013. The 2021 survey, which included data from 162 minority librarians, served as the foundation for three peer-reviewe...

Sex – and media that depicts sex and sexually suggestive subject matter – remains stigmatised in western society. As pornography and sexually explicit material more broadly have become of increasing interest to researchers across several disciplines such as pornography studies and gender and sexuality studies, so too does the demand on institutions and practitioners in libraries, archives, and special collections to provide access to these materials. However, the taboo associated with the sub...

Following the introduction of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL, 2016) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, efforts to meaningfully promote and enact the more conceptually oriented form of post-secondary information literacy instruction (ILI) evinced by the document have spread. However, perceptions of the Framework as elitist or inaccessible; the persistence of one-shot sessions as the dominant ILI format; and the difficulty of teaching and learning...

This presentation will explore a collection, or rather an absence of collection, of moving image works in a Canadian academic institution. Between March 2020 and March 2022, faculty at Concordia University requested over 2,000 films in streaming format to be purchased or licensed by the university library for course and research use. Approximately one third of these requests were unable to be fulfilled due to licensing and rights limitations. Funded by the Concordia University Library Researc...

This project investigates whether workers in Canadian academic libraries are receiving gender diversity training and in what forms. The recent rise of anti-trans sentiment and aggression on Canadian streets, in parliaments, schools, libraries and online spaces warrants an urgent recentering of trans communities in both our scholarship and work environments. Since at least 2005, LIS literature has been exploring the experience of trans and gender non-conforming  library patrons and worker...