Editorial. (2016). Canadian Journal of Academic Librarianship, 1(1), 4–6. © The editors, CC BY-NC-ND.
Editorial
t
he launch of the Canadian Journal of Academic Librarianship (CJAL) is directly related to the reason that the Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL) was founded in 2012.1 Existing library associations had increasingly failed to acknowledge the need for critical spaces and forums in which the professional concerns of academic librarians in Canada could be openly voiced, shared, and ad- dressed. At a one-day symposium, “Academic Librarianship: A Crisis or an Opportu- nity?” held on November 18, 2011 at the University of Toronto, the community of pro- fessional academic librarians affirmed the need to proactively organize a new voice to speak on our behalf.2 This call to action led to the launch of CAPAL one year later.One of CAPAL’s first priorities was to organize annual conferences as a member of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our first conference, “shifting landscapes: exploring the Boundaries of academic liBrarianship,” was held at Brock University on May 25–26, 2014, and our second, “academic liBrarianship and
critical practice,” was held at the University of Ottawa on May 31–June 2, 2015.
CAPAL’s annual conferences provide an in-person forum for exchanging ideas and networking on a national level. The launch of CJAL as an open-access journal follows naturally from these conferences and provides an additional forum for widening the professional discourse.
When academic librarians are active as scholars as well as practitioners, the academic communities in which they work can prosper as truly enlightened spaces.
Efforts to thwart or suppress the discourse of academic librarians serve to diminish the academic environments that we labour to support. At the core of our profession is the right to academic freedom in its most profound sense, and with this comes a quest for transparency, open discourse, and critical viewpoints. The rapidly changing worlds of information, publishing, and access to research, along with constant
changes in technology, require academic librarians, trained in a wide range of disciplines, to contribute critically to their various fields of expertise.
In an already crowded scholarly landscape, why begin a new academic journal?
One distinction of the Canadian Journal of Academic Librarianship is its focus on
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advancing the profession of academic librarianship rather than the institutions of academic libraries. Academic librarians are members of a profession committed to fostering and upholding the core academic values and principles associated with teaching, learning, and research in higher education, and they play an integral role in supporting the academic missions of their institutions. The journal will focus on topics that relate to these defining features of academic librarians and to the values articulated in CAPAL’s guiding document, “academic liBrarianship: a statement
of principles.” These values include intellectual and academic freedom, shared governance, and eradicating discrimination, to name a few.
Second, CJAL is open to all research methodologies. Whereas other journals tend to categorize librarianship as a social science and publish research conducted in a social-scientific framework, we believe that scholarship conducted according to the norms and standards of the humanistic disciplines also has much to offer our profession. Academic librarians work in the full range of disciplines, and their expertise is not bounded by a single norm. We therefore encourage research from diverse perspectives and methodologies.
Third, CJAL is Canadian. We are particularly motivated to promote the profession of academic librarianship in Canada. We are committed to a bilingual publication, in French and English. Yet this Canadian focus is in no way limiting to a broader readership, since many of the issues that we face in this country transcend national boundaries. CJAL also welcomes articles focusing on matters elsewhere, as long as these have transnational significance.
In this first issue, we are pleased to publish six articles that were originally presented as conference papers at the CAPAL 2015 annual conference, along with two book reviews. CAPAL advocates for high standards in the profession, fostering the creation and dissemination of knowledge about academic librarianship and providing critical analysis and public comment on issues affecting academic librarians and academic librarianship. Join us by exploring, critiquing, and advancing academic librarianship in Canada and beyond, by reading and contributing to the Canadian Journal of Academic Librarianship.
editors
Monica Fazekas, University of Western Ontario Kristin Hoffmann, University of Western Ontario Marie-Ève Ménard, Université de Montréal Lisa Richmond, Wheaton College
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board
Melanie Boyd, University of Calgary
Colleen Burgess, University of Western Ontario Camille Callison, University of Manitoba
Douglas Fox, Victoria University in the University of Toronto Leona Jacobs, University of Lethbridge
Mary Kandiuk, York University Hilary Lynd, Dalhousie University Eva Revitt, MacEwan University Lisa Richmond, Wheaton College
Harriet Sonne de Torrens, University of Toronto, Mississauga
notes
1. Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians, Retrieved from capaliBr arians.org
2. Granfield, D., Kandiuk, M., & Sonne de Torrens, H. (2011). academicliBr arianship: a crisisor anopportunit y? Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, 6(2), 1–6.
