Generative artificial intelligence has become a crucial topic in the library and information science field over the past year. The use of tools that leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) is rapidly disrupting practices in content creation and information retrieval, and it is urgent to test this technology’s potential impacts in the context of libraries’ user-centred services like reference, instruction, and research support.This session will present an overview of the work done to date...

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...

For 3 months in 2023 I collected job postings on the partnership job board, and have been analyzing them to determine what salaries people who work in Canadian libraries are being offered, and what that means for their material quality of life.The main research questions I have set out to answer are: 1. Based on salary information available for new job postings in libraries, what is the material quality of life that someone working in a library can expect to have? 2. ...

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...