As one year comes to an end and a new year awaits, it is timely to turn our thoughts to those who worked tirelessly over the many years to promote our profession at academic institutions. There are many deserving colleagues, more than we even know, for often the most deserving are the silent ones. Our recent call for nominations for the CAUT award for the Academic Librarians Distinguished Award has brought forth many distinguished colleagues who have been working on your behalf at the University of Toronto. Unfortunately, we seldom hear about the contributions these individuals have made to our profession, scholarship and work environment. Academic librarians are shamefully under appreciated and acknowledged at our esteemed institution. But, we can change that! Right?
To start, we would like to acknowledge the work of Kent Weaver, a senior academic librarian at the Information Technology Services, John P. Robarts Research Library, who has commenced a phased retirement period. Kent has been a dedicated member of the University of Toronto Faculty Association since the late 1990s. He has worked to support numerous projects undertaken at UTFA on behalf of our whole membership. From 2009 to 2011 Kent was Vice-President, University and External Affairs at UTFA and kept our membership and UTFA Executive informed on the crucial issues facing our colleagues across Canada. In 2008-2009 he was a member of the Ad Hoc Investigatory Committee into Academic Librarians at McGill University organized by CAUT; in 2010 he was awarded the Canadian Library Association Award for the Advancement of Intellectual Freedom in Canada. Kent was the Chair of the Librarians Committee and Member of Executive Committee at CAUT. In 2007 he was a lead contributor to the CAUT conference, “Moving Forward: Academic Librarians and Collective Bargaining” on October 26 & 27, 2007. In addition, he has been involved with several high profile grievances undertaken here at UTFA on behalf of academic librarianship over the years, which were successfully resolved. These are but a few of the many projects to which Kent has contributed.
University of Toronto Academic Librarians 