Call for Participation: New Librarians Symposium

March 7, 2020

New graduates and early career LIS folks take note!

The organizing committee for the New Librarians Symposium* (NLS) invite you to submit a lightning talk for our event, happening Friday, June 19, 2020 at Ryerson University (Toronto, ON).

The theme for this year’s event is Libraries and Labour: The Current Landscape and the Road Ahead. In selecting this theme, we would like to consider what labour challenges the profession currently faces. What questions do you have about labour, working conditions, and power structures? What does the library labour landscape have in common with the rest of the public sector and how are current provincial, statewide, or federal governments impacting that landscape? What are the most pressing labour issues our profession or its organizations need to address in order to survive in the current society and economy? What does labour mean to you and how do you engage in asserting or fighting for your rights?

Submissions should take a critical approach to this topic and address issues not discussed at other conferences in the field. Proposals from BIPOC, LGBTQ folks, and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged. We would like to see as many diverse voices as possible.

Topics for lightning talks may include, but are not limited to:

• Labour unions and the service to their membership
• Power structures and their influence on early career professionals
• Precarious employment and labour
• Interrogating employer and profession-based rhetoric around labour, worker rights, work-life balance, and wellness
• The influence of organizational health on individual workers and service quality
• Personal stories about getting involved in labour issues and why this work matters
• Library leadership and labour
• Caregiving, work-life balance, and their intersections with labour
• Emotional labour, hope labour, or other forms of invisibilized labour
• Contract / collective agreement negotiations
• Academic status and implications for labour
• (In)equity and salary negotiation

Interested? Complete this submission form by April 10, 2020.

If you have any questions about the lightning talk format (7 minutes of a presentation, followed by 3 minutes of questions) or the suitability of a topic, please reach out to Ali Versluis (versluis@uoguelph.ca), Hana Storova (hstorova@uoguelph.ca), or Melanie Cassidy (cmelanie@uoguelph.ca). You can find out more about the New Librarians Symposium by checking out the event website.

*Although librarian is used in the title of the event, this is used as a catchall phrase for librarians, archivists, record and knowledge managers, and everyone in between.

(Via New Librarians Symposium)