The LAAUW Executive would like to thank all our members for their continued support, input and participation in all the activities and discussions we have had over the past year.
We would like to provide you with a brief update of our projects and activities since our AGM in May 2019.
Rolling Out Changes
As it was voted in at our last AGM to change the name of our association to include archivists we have been working diligently to reflect this in all of our communications and web presence. We invite anyone to let us know if we have missed the name change anywhere as we move forward. The Librarians and Archivists Association of the University of Waterloo is proud to represent our archivist colleagues and want to make this evident in all of our communications!
We have also reflected all the voted in constitutional changes on the website and will be posting a downloadable PDF version on the website: https://uwaterloo.ca/librarians-archivists-association/about/constitution
New Website and New Knowledge Management
We have completed our migration over to the WCMS website https://uwaterloo.ca/librarians-archivists-association/ and have officially decommissioned the old WordPress site. This has also resulted in us creating a SharePoint presence that will house our archive of documents, new and old. This will allow some stability in the preservation of our documents as we are largely creating born digital documents and no longer maintain a comprehensive print archive of association business.
Academic Status Comparator Institutions Working Group
As outlined in the call for participation, the Academic Status Comparator Institutions Working Group is seeking to gain a better understanding of the finer details of what academic status looks like at other institutions. This is not a broad overview but a more in-depth discovery that may help to inform discussion here. The work of the, dare I call them, “ASCIWG” has begun and they are currently reviewing what academic status looks like at a select number of comparator institutions. They are on track to conduct some consultation sessions this Winter term, well in advance of our AGM, to collect feedback on their findings and discuss next steps with our membership.
Advocacy
The LAAUW Executive actively monitors issues related to academic librarians and archivists, within and outside of Waterloo. We have been providing input on the revisions of the Librarians’ and Archivists’ Employment Handbook and eagerly await its finalization.
We recently collected and submitted a response to the call for feedback on the draft Competencies for CARL/ABRC Librarians.
We have also brought issues and concerns regarding Librarians’ and Archivists’ work capacity to our Library Executive group in a formal discussion setting and will continue to work with them to bridge discussions with you, our association membership. To this end, we will be sending out a brief of our formal discussion shortly and are looking for ways to extend discussions around work capacity for librarians and archivists to include the entire membership. Stay tuned!
In addition to these activities, we continue to invite members to approach us with any issues or concerns. We will keep these discussions confidential unless expressly indicated, upon which we can bring these concerns to LAAUW Executive meetings for discussion and/or forward to our Library Executive if requested and/or necessary.
On Behalf of the Librarian and Archivists Association of the University of Waterloo Executive,
Laura Bredahl
LAAUW President (2018-2020)
