Academic Librarianship in Canada: Post-COVID Perspectives in a Neoliberal Era

This edited collection of seven critical essays is focused on the changing dynamics of academic librarianship through the lens of Canadian professionals responding to the corporatization of their scholarly workplaces and the erosion of their communities of practice. The contributors’ underlying concern is the transformation of academic libraries from sites of collegial scholarly activity into hierarchically led operations driven by values and priorities alien to academia. Consequently, all contributions in this volume reflect on various aspects of this neoliberal turn shaping the political economy of knowledge production and dissemination of information, as well as changes in academic teaching, funding, institutional relationships, and the publishing industry. The unifying core of this volume is the fundamental role of professional academic librarianship in an increasingly techno-global, post-pandemic environment.

Jessica E. Shiers is currently the Head of Collections for the Algonquin College library system as well as a Librarian and Coordinator for the Ottawa campus. She has an Honours BSc. from the University of Guelph, an MLIS from Wayne State University and holds a Ph.D. from the Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.

Harriet M. Sonne de Torrens is an appointed academic librarian and medievalist at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) in the UTM Library and Department of Visual Studies, and an Associate Scholar with the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. She has an MISt and MA from the University of Toronto, a Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen and a Licentiate in Mediaeval Studies from the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at the University of Toronto.

Joanna Szurmak is Interim Associate Librarian, Library & Learning Services, and Head, Instruction Services, at the University of Toronto Mississauga Library where she has worked since 2007. Szurmak is a PhD candidate in the Science and Technology Studies program at York University in Toronto and has earned two Master’s degrees (Applied Science in Electrical Engineering in 1998; Information Studies in 2000) from the University of Toronto.

Meaghan Valant is a Liaison Librarian with the Sociology and Political Science departments at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She completed her Master of Arts in Sociology at McMaster University in 2011 and her Master of Information, Library and Information Science, at the University of Toronto in 2015.