Call for Proposals for New Librarians Symposium 2021

The New Librarians Symposium, an event for early career information professionals, is hosting its 2021 session on June 11 and has issued a call for proposals for short lightning talks. 

The deadline for submitting a proposal is March 5th, 2021:

"The theme of this year’s New Librarian Symposium is Libraries and Labour: Organizing for Action. This year, we would like to interrogate what labour challenges the profession currently faces. What questions do you want to explore around labour, working conditions, and power structures? What does action look like for you, in the context of your role or organization? How are current provincial, statewide, or federal governments impacting labour? What are the most pressing labour issues our profession or its organizations need to address in order to survive? What does labour mean to you and how do you engage in asserting or fighting for your rights? (...)"

"Topics for lightning talks may include, but are not limited to:

• Labour unions and their service to their membership
• Power structures and their influence on early career professionals
• The impact of a global pandemic on expectations around service and job performance
• Civil rights advocacy from within/without a stable position or union protection
• Precarious employment and labour
• Interrogating employer rhetoric around labour, worker rights, work-life balance, and wellness
• The influence of organizational health on individual workers and service quality
• Personal stories about getting engaged in labour issues and why this work matters
• Library leadership and labour
• Caregiving, work-life balance, and their intersections with labour
• Emotional labour, hope labour, or other forms of invisibilized labour
• Contract / collective agreement negotiations
• Academic status and the implications for labour
• (In)equity and salary negotiation
• Reinforcing and upholding racial inequity/white supremacy in publicly funded institutions"