Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA): October 2025 Update

October 31, 2025

The Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA) has provided an overview of its activities.

Update

October 2025

Message from the Chair

Happy Autumn! CFLA-FCAB has had an incredibly busy summer, and while much of our activity has been internally focused, we have been making tremendous progress towards implementing your feedback from the community conversations of the previous year. The implementation of our organizational review began in spring with the appointment of Margaret Law as CFLA-FCAB’s Interim Executive Director. Her career has uniquely positioned her to lead CFLA-FCAB’s transformation efforts, and she has been meeting regularly with stakeholders as part of our commitment to enhanced member engagement and communication.

Thank you to all our members for their ongoing support for CFLA-FCAB – the positive response and support for the federation’s transformation efforts have been overwhelming and humbling. Your patience and trust have been invaluable as we take the steps needed to reinvigorate CFLA-FCAB, and as we are making significant progress on implementing your feedback and recommendations, we are closer than ever to achieving a viable and sustainable national association. On behalf of the CFLA-FCAB Board, I wish to sincerely thank everyone who has pledged their commitment and vocal support and wish you all a healthy and successful autumn!

Andrea Cecchetto
Chair, CFLA-FCAB
chair@cfla-fcab.ca

Intellectual Freedom Award

The call for nominations has been sent out. Nominations can be sent to info@cfla-fcab.ca with the subject line “IF Award Nomination”. November 9, 2025, is the deadline for submission and the award will be presented at the OLA Super Conference in January.

CARL and CFLA-FCAB Release New Guide on the Canadian Copyright Act for Accessible Content

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and the Canadian Federation of Library Associations-La Fédération canadienne des associations de bibliothèques (CFLA-FCAB) announce the release of Accessible Content: A Guide to the Canadian Copyright Act on Searching for Accessible Formats and Producing and Distributing Alternate Formats.

This guide provides a clear, practical overview of the laws governing access to and use of copyrighted materials for people with perceptual disabilities in Canada. It covers how these laws are applied, offers a checklist of requirements, shares best practices, and provides practical advice for everyday situations. The guide also includes recommendations on eliminating barriers to access and a glossary of relevant terms.

Task Forces

The transition from standing committees to task forces is underway. The initial three task forces were approved by the Board in September, and we anticipate more proposals to be presented to the Board in the coming months. If you are interested in proposing a task force, you can request an information package with guidelines from info@cfla-fcab.ca. The task forces that were approved are:

• Understanding the Legislation about Hate Literature
• Recruitment of Indigenous People into Librarianship
• Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

As the task forces progress, we will be reaching out to members for recommendations for people with expertise to participate in them. It is important to note that this change does not mean that we have changed focus on what is important to us: cataloguing and metadata, climate change, copyright, Indigenous matters, and intellectual freedom.

Advocacy

We are moving away from our traditional approach to advocacy, which has been expensive and not effective, and trying to work directly with government ministers. We are forming partnerships with departments in different ministries where we can demonstrate the expertise and value of the library community. We believe this will provide better outcomes moving forward and we become increasingly well known, and departments continue to reach out to us to work with them. This doesn’t represent a change in direction for the association, merely a change in process.

Partnerships

We are pleased to announce that we have been invited to partner with different organizations. To facilitate these partnerships, and to ensure that we have the best people representing us, the Executive will appoint individuals to promote the expertise of the library community and bring opportunities back to the Board. In addition to previous partnerships, we have entered into new agreements with:

• Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC): Lita Barrie will be representing us in discussions with this partner.
• Canadian Daisy Consortium: Victoria Owen will be representing us with this partner.
• Public Safety’s Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence: the Executive Director is currently participating, but as this partnership moves ahead, we will appoint another representative.

As opportunities for representation arise, we will be reaching out to our members for recommendations of individuals who can represent CFLA-FCAB.

IFLA

Congratulations to all Canadian presenters at this year’s World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) in Astana, Kazakhstan. Andrea, in her role as CFLA-FCAB Chair, hosted the Canadian Caucus meeting and connected with so many exceptional Canadian experts. WLIC is a perspective-changing experience and provides so many rich insights and opportunities for our work. CFLA anticipates renewed opportunities to deepen Canadian representation within IFLA to enrich our professional perspectives.

Administrative Changes

We have overhauled accounting, invoicing, and financial management systems to support the future of the federation. The current records management changes will ensure that CFLA-FCAB documents are secure and that we can maintain necessary confidentiality, while ensuring documents that are necessary to continue the association’s work are accessible. As we work through this process, you may find that you are not able to open documents or files you had access to in the past. If there’s something you need, please contact us at info@cfla-fcab.ca or administration@cfla-fcab.ca.

Website

We have launched our new website at cfla-fcab.ca. When you visit, you will see it is still under construction, as we build it into a resource for the Canadian library community to find the connections they need. We will be adding education information for the library community, including bursaries and the task forces. Position statements and other resources will still be readily available.

Communication

Members have identified that communication has been an issue for them and understanding CFLA-FCAB is important to them so that they can see the connections we are making and the work we are doing on their behalf. We are addressing that in several ways – we have recently sent out bulletins explaining what we have been doing and addressing questions about the change from standing committees to task forces. We will also be sending out quarterly notes, outlining matters of importance to our members. If you need more information, feel free to send questions or concerns to info@cfla-fcab.ca.

Share Your Thoughts

We are happy to get feedback on this way of communicating with you. We’d like our members to know what is going on with CFLA-FCAB, so let us know if you’d like more information, or if you’d like the information delivered in a different way, by contacting Executive Director Margaret Law at executivedirector@cfla-fcab.ca.

(Via Canadian Federation of Library Associations)