Thank you for attending our inaugural meeting, which took place 5:00-6:30pm, Thursday January 11th, 2007 at SLAIS Technology Enterprise Facility, Room 320. Minutes are provided on this wiki.

Welcome

This is a wiki for the School of Library, Archival & Information Studies (SLAIS) Multicultural Committee. We are a group comprised of both library professionals, academic scholars, and students interested in advancing issues in multicultural librarianship and multilingual studies, with the goal of promoting the profession to not only undergraduate students, but the general population interested in similar issues.

Members

• Ann Doyle
• Edie Rasmussen
• Linda Joe
• Eleanor Yuen
• Jing Liu
• Henry Yu
• Leah Pearse
• May Yan-Mountain
• Allan Cho
• Candice Fong
• Woan-Jen Wang

Timeline

Notes start from October 21, 2006

(1) October 21, 2006 - Henry inquires about possible link between SLAIS and History, particularly a "track" is possible for UBC undergraduate students interested in a career in librarianship

(2) October 26, 2006 - Jing has indicated that one year ago, two SLAIS students approached her to form a SLAIS Chinese Student group; however, the group never got off the ground due to a lack of student interest. Rather, Jing suggests the creation of a Chinese Canadian Library Association (modeled after the Chinese American Library Association) which includes student memberships. Jing suggests I conduct a poll and gage the amount of interest.

(3) October 27, 2006 - Joe is supportive, but suggests a need for "purpose" and a "scope" (mission statement) before proceeding. Joe also suggests the inclusion of First Nations to truly have this "multilingual"

(4) November 10, 2006 - Leah Pearse, SLAIS Master of Library/Archival joint student, has expressed interest in joining this group. She has interest from a First Nations perspective

(5) December 9, 2006 - Discussions between Allan and Henry. Henry suggests having a meeting for early January in order for everyone to come together and discuss the next steps.

(6) December 12, 2006 - Emails sent to Ann, Eleanor, Jing, Linda, Leah, Jonathan, Edie, Joe, Henry, and May about possible meeting schedule

(7) December 15, 2006 - Edie suggests that "multi-cultural" or "crosscultural" might be a better term than "multilingual"

(8) December 19, 2006 - Meeting with Ann Doyle at the Xwi7xwa Library; Ann is supportive of the ideas presented, and would offer Xwi7xwa's meeting room as the space for the inaugural meeting.

(9) December 31, 2006 - Creation of the SLAIS Multicultural Committee wiki

(10) January 3, 2007 - Emails sent and received for schedule of possibilities for inaugural meeting

(11) January 4, 2007 - January 11, 2007 works best, shopping online but unfortunately, not everyone can make it. Ann suggests either: (a) postponing and deferring until another time when all can make it; or (b) go ahead and hold a smaller meeting first, and plan for a full-scale meeting later on. She proposes that the problem is that faculty and working librarians have different schedules, must be more aware of this in the next round of organizing...TEF 320 is the meeting place...

(12) February 9, 2007 Held discussion with Eleanor Yuen about possible projects for SLAIS Multicultural Committee students.

(13) February 18, 2007 Invited Candice Fong to join the Students component.

(14) February 27, 2007 Suggested possible involvement with the Multicultural Project http://www.multiculturalcanada.ca

(15) March 16th, 2007 Candice and Allan had meeting with Ann Doyle regarding Xwi7xwa Library's role in this committee and SLAIS. Ann suggests that another term other than "multicultural" might be more appropriate if we are to include First Nations and Aboriginal issues.

(16) March 30th, 2007 A suggestion for the title, "Cultural Diversity Committee" might be appropriate? Upcoming meetings to come...

(17) August 11, 2007 - Henry confirms a class will be taught in Term 2 of 2008 at UBC's History department graduate studies entitled, History 597D (201) Topics in Comparative History: Migration, offered Mondays 12pm-2pm. It will be joint course with SLAIS, as a pilot project for initial collaboration among the two departments.