The UWO-CLA blog regularly publishes writings of its student members in order to allow our them to express their thoughts and opinions on issues in library and information science. These writings are not meant to represent the views of the UWO-CLA itself or the greater CLA organisation. Your comments and questions are encouraged on this blog. If you wish to contact the UWO-CLA directly please email claatuwo@gmail.com.
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Lukas Miller is in his third term at Western. He hails from Regina, Saskatchewan, and has his Bachelor of Music from the University of Regina. His primary interests include music and music librarianship, information retrieval, and academic librarianship! In his spare time he enjoys listening to music, playing video games, sampling varieties of beer, and talking about library and information science related issues.
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My name is Lukas Miller, I am the UWO CLA Communications Executive (I edit this blog!) for the summer term of which we are already five weeks into. I nominated myself for this position due to my penchant for partaking in various social networking platforms on a personal level - I figured I could contribute to the CLA by projecting it on the web and places outside the university campus. I also happen to be PLG London's Communications Executive - for the same reasons as outlined above for the CLA. So far, I'm enjoying my jobs and hope that it is perceived as such by my peers, the LIS students at Western, and any and all who follow CLA and PLG related issues and events. Now on to the discussion.
To begin, it is important to point out that the CLA at UWO has not existed for several years now. The group completely fell out of favour with UWO students for an undetermined reason - the specifics of the fallout of the UWO CLA will never truly be known without contacting past members - an endeavor that nobody as of yet is willing to take on (efforts to get in touch with past CLA executives have been fruitless). One thing that is certain though, is that the CLA did not grow in popularity over the last year or so, when issues surrounding Library and Archives Canada (LAC) went unchallenged by Canada's so-called professional library association - the CLA. Many professional and student members of the organization ended up not renewing their memberships as a way of displaying their displeasure at the CLA's lack of advocacy and action over issues at the LAC. Unfortunately, I do not have much space here to dote on what exactly transpired at LAC, but here is a link [http://www.savelibraryarchives.ca] to a web site run by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) that was created in light of those issues.
Long story short - many people were unimpressed with CLA, and such as it is, they still are today. However, I see things a little differently.
First of all, let me be clear on this point - I too felt betrayed by the fact that the CLA felt no responsibility to stand up and advocate for libraries and librarians when the aforementioned issues rose up at LAC; I was a member of the PLG before the CLA because I felt things needed to be said, issues needed to be raised, and actions needed to be taken in order to save LAC. Consequently, speaking out in favour of protecting LAC would serve to advocate for all libraries in Canada - whether national government libraries, public libraries, academic libraries or even special libraries. This is where things get shaky.
I am anti-neutrality when it comes to being an information professional - whether a librarian, archivist, or related profession. I will spare you my thoughts on this for now (we had some excellent discussion on the blog post from Thomas Haennel, which you can read here [http://uwo-cla.blogspot.ca/2013/05/on-neutrality-tomas-haennel.html] along with my own comments below his posting). Long story short, the CLA got into trouble with the library community and library students across this country because they decided to take a back-seat to the LAC issues. Fast forward to today…
I joined the UWO CLA because I was beginning to see the larger CLA organization begin to speak out on library related issues. Their Twitter feed is now abuzz, daily, pointing out problems requiring the attention of its members. They release official statements now, such as ones regarding Daniel Caron's recent resignation and the appointment of a new director of LAC. I felt that simply letting the CLA stagnate and be the brunt of criticism from begrudged librarians would obviously not improve the organization in any way, so why not join up and do something about it?
I do not want to give anyone the impression that I plan to indoctrinate UWO CLA members to non-neutral causes: I respect the right of my peers and colleagues to come to their own conclusions. Ask any of the other CLA executives and I'm sure they will tell you that I have put no pressure on anybody in the group to subscribe to my own beliefs. What I do try to do though is at least bring the issues to light when I can. The UWO CLA is likened with being solely a “professional development” organization. This is all well and good, but part of being a professional is being aware of the issues surrounding your profession. If certain issues put your profession under scrutiny which may lead to loss of jobs and authority, those issues should be examined by the organization and a stance made.
This, I suppose, is why I’ve joined the UWO CLA – I want to ensure that issues (issues most often brought up in PLG meetings) are introduced to its members so that they are aware of the complications that comes with being a professional. I do not expect the CLA to be a reactionary organization in the way that the PLG is, but I do hope that its members will at least be aware of the issues at hand and think critically about them.
Ultimately, I hope to see the PLG and UWO working alongside each other, rather than cautiously treading around each other. I think they both simply need time to evolve and build bridges - the UWO CLA to find it roots and adapt to how the larger organization has come along, and the PLG to understand that change will come from within the organization in due time.
There is no reason students other than myself shouldn't be able to participate in one group or the other, or both simultaneously.
Thanks for listening!
--Lukas
