#CLA2011 has come and gone, and so have all its divisions and interest groups left us. They’re going to be replaced with “networks“, which will be self-governed, self-initiated groups who advocate the interests of their members. This is a bit risky, I agree, but I like this move in principle: it shows that the CLA has faith in its members, and it will help the general membership come together in ways that interest them the most.
But we’ve got a little dilemma here. As Kim at Re:Gen has pointed out, the organizational structure of the Association as we know it has been wiped away. There’s now nothing until we rebuild it again. The king is dead; long live the king.
And that’s what we plan to do. There is currently a group of academic librarians, who are mostly new or recent graduates, that is working on creating a new network to represent our interests. Here’s what we’re interested in:
- Real and effective networking, in the profession and at the library schools
- Crowd-sourced professional development from our peers and by our peers
- Tech, lots of tech. There are 5 time zones in Canada, people, and the Interwebs helps bring us together
- Raising the visibility of a new generation of information professionals. We want to take part in (if not drive) transformative change in our academic libraries.
We can’t and we won’t do this without you. If you are interested in the future of academic librarianship in Canada (and your place in it), then please visit our wiki and contribute to it today We are looking for ideas for this network’s aims and goals, and we are looking for like-minded librarians and library students who want to participate.
Head to the wiki, create an account, post your opinions, and make this happen. Let’s do this.
And if you needed one more reason to contribute, then it’s this:
The name of the game is networking: people meeting people, for the purpose of meeting again at a later date.
[n.b. You can contact me personally for more information, too.]
[edit: June 3/2011 : There is already movement on the wiki to expand the scope of this network beyond academic librarians, which I wholly support. Am I an academic librarian? Yes, I am, but the adjective only modifies the noun. We're librarians/info.pros first and foremost. Let's define ourselves by our profession rather by our trade.]
