Canadian Federation of Library Associations Update (February 2019)

March 18, 2019

Katherine McColgan, Executive Director of the Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA), has provided an overview of activities since December 31, 2018.

Advocacy

Meetings with Members of Parliament and Government Officials

On January 10th, I met with senior staff at the Treasury Board to discuss the 2019 Open Government Global Summit that will be hosted by Canada in May 2019. The summit brings together over 2000 people from open government partner countries to discuss open government initiatives. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss CFLA-FCAB’s participation in the summit. We were invited to participate in two ways; the first was to submit a proposal for a panel session and the second was to invite member libraries to consider hosting an event. This call for interest was sent in early February. Please see https://ogpsummit.org/en/.

On January 15th I attended the Canadian Consortium for Research’s (CCR) 7th Annual Funders Breakfast that brings together senior officials from CFI, CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC, and MiTACS. The meeting offers the opportunity to discuss plans for the granting councils moving forward over the next year, developments on programs and funding opportunity and to discuss how the association community can help support continued investments and growth to the councils. It also offers a great opportunity to personally meet the individuals who help to shape that policy.

Other Advocacy Developments

Work continues on the Parliamentary review of the Copyright Act. It is anticipated the final report from the consultations will be made available at the beginning of April.

CFLA-FCAB and CARL submitted a joint brief to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on creator remuneration.

Activities

Challenges Survey

In November 2018 we opened the Intellectual Freedom Challenges Survey. Historical practice has been to open the survey once a year for respondents to complete the challenges received in the previous year.

In 2018, CFLA-FCAB agreed to adopt ALA’s practice and will leave the survey tool open at all times so that individuals may be able to report challenges as they occur. We hope that this will incur greater participation.

Remember that the survey is active all year!

The survey can be found here. Please be sure to bookmark this link for easy access

Committee Updates

Cataloguing and Metadata Standards

To help Canadian libraries prepare for the shift to BIBFRAME, the CFLA-FCAB Cataloguing and Metadata Standards Committee/ Comité sur les normes relatives au catalogage et aux métadonnées (CMSC/CNSM) is partnering with ASTED, BaNQ, Library and Archives Canada, and the Library of Parliament to form the Canadian BIBFRAME Readiness Task Force. The task force will survey the current Canadian cataloguing and metadata landscape and prepare documentation that CMSC/CNSM will use to develop a Canadian BIBFRAME strategy, helping Canadian libraries make the transition from MARC to BIBFRAME.

Copyright

The committee is keeping a watching brief on the report expect from the INDU Committee (April) on the Copyright Act review.

A working group has been struck to assess the Marrakesh Treaty under Canadian legislation. There are 15 articles of the Marrakesh Treaty guide that need to be customized.

There is also a small working group drafting an op-ed piece for the Hill Times and will put it forward for an issue that is timely and relevant to the article.

CFLA-FCAB along with CARL and other interested parties met with Internet Archives while in Toronto to discuss the Controlled Digital Lending initiative. The University of Alberta has done a small pilot and now Internet Archives is looking for additional institutions (up to 5) to partner on a pilot project with multiple collections. A handful of institutions, both public and academic, have stepped forward.

A small working group has also been struck to draft a discussion paper for Canada on CDL. Work on this will take place on this in the next four to six months.

Indigenous Matters

Camille Callison, Chair of the Indigenous Matters Committee stepped down in January 2019. On behalf of the CFLA-FCAB Board, I would like to sincerely thank Camille for all of the work she has done in to bring together this committee and to move forward on the recommendations of the TRC report.

Colette Poitras, Manager of Indigenous Public Library Outreach with the Alberta Municipal Affairs’ Public Library Services Branch has taken on the role of Chair and is supported by Stacy Allison-Cassin, Associate Librarian at York University as Vice-Chair. Stacy is also the newly elected Indigenous ancestry representative to the CFLA-FCAB Board.

The IMC-CQA spearheaded a meeting in Toronto on January 29, 2019 to discuss the proposed National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance/Alliance nationale des connaissances et langues autochtones (NIKLA-ANCLA).

NIKLA-ANCLA is a national Indigenous-led alliance for professionals working the space of Indigenous language and culture. A number of people met in person and virtually to discuss various items such as governance, structure and scope. More information will follow.

Intellectual Freedom

The committee has established two working groups; Intellectual Freedom Statement Working Group and Intellectual Freedom Toolkit Working Group. Work has begun in both the areas with more information to follow this coming year.

The committee has developed a statement “Position on Third Party Use of Publicly Funded Library Meetings Rooms and Facilities: An Interpretation of the Canadian Federation of Library Associations’ Statement on Intellectual Freedom and Libraries”. The statement is now available on the CFLA-FCAB website.

The committee has also been following closely the decision by Post Media to cease delivering paper copies in favour of electronic copies of newspapers to K-12 libraries in response to the recent Cannabis Act (S.C. 2018, c. 16).

Strategic Planning Working Group

The working group presented its preliminary draft of CFLA-FCAB’s Strategic Plan at the Annual General Meeting in January. The document was later circulated to members electronically for further comment. Please send me any comments you have on the plan by Sunday March 31, 2019.

Administration & Outreach

New on the website

Modernizing Crown Copyright

E-Books And Licensed Digital Content In Public Libraries

Effects of the Canada, US, Mexico Agreement Term Extensions

Brief to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage

Meetings with Members

Alix-Rae Stefanko met with The Partnership on January 29th to discuss the activities of CFLA-FCAB with several of our member institutions.

Attending OLA also gave us the opportunity to meet with a number of member institutions and key stakeholders in person. This opportunity is extremely valuable to the work of the Federation and I would like to thank OLA for their continued support in this area.

We held our 3rd Annual General Meeting on January 30, 2019 during the OLA Superconference in Toronto. I am pleased to note the room was at capacity and we had 22 of our 25 member associations present both in person or online. The membership voted in favour of adopting the proposed Bylaw amendments which came in to force at the end of the AGM. The membership also accepted the Public Accountant’s Review Engagement report and approved Ousely, Hanvey, Clipsham, Deep, LLP as public accountants for the 2018-19 fiscal year. Our new slate of Board members was approved by the membership. The 2018-19 Board of Directors can be found here (url). Thank you to everyone for your participation and support.

Save the Date : CFLA-FCAB National Forum 2020

In celebration of Manitoba’s 150th anniversary, CFLA-FCAB will be joining the Manitoba Library Association’s Conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba on April 7 – 8, 2020. More information will be posted to the website as it becomes available.