OCULA President’s Report 2024

By Graham Lavender

I’ve already handed the OCULA presidency over to Matthew Rohweder, but I wanted to write again as I transition into my role as Past President. I won’t repeat too much of what I’ve said in my President’s Report, though I will certainly express my gratitude to everyone who contributed to OCULA Council in 2023. It was a pleasure and an honour to work with such a fantastic team.

Super Conference 2024 was a blast! I’d like to give a big thank you to OCULA Co-Planners Gouthami Vigneswaran and Abdullah Yossofzai, who put together an outstanding program. Meredith Broussard gave a terrific OCULA Spotlight session, where she provided a refreshingly critical perspective on the algorithms behind the technology we use every day. At the OCULA Awards and Reception, it was wonderful to chat with so many people, some of whom I had only seen previously inside a Zoom box. But the highlight for me was the OCULA Lightning Strikes, where six LIS students gave lightning talks on a variety of topics. I don’t know whether they had read the OCULA Student Guide to Super Conference, but they all appeared to be confident and well prepared on stage, and I was blown away by the professionalism of both the delivery and the content of all of the talks. In fact, they were so good that we couldn’t pick just one, and we ended up selecting two winners. I am very pleased that Sahar Kasiri-Motlagh and Rochelle David, both students at the University of Toronto’s iSchool, are joining OCULA Council as student representatives for the coming year. Most registration categories include streaming access until July 31, 2024, so if you registered for the in-person conference and missed some sessions, be sure to check out the recordings on the virtual platform, including the Lightning Strikes (audio only) and Meredith Broussard’s Spotlight session.

If you’re curious to know what OCULA has been up to over the past year, I encourage you to take a look at the President’s Report, where I discuss the work we’ve been doing, including the student engagement subcommittee, the EDI Community of Practice, and the OCULA Spring Conference on Decentering Whiteness in Academic Libraries.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or ideas for OCULA! You can find our contact info on the OCULA Council page.

Graham Lavender is Bibliothécaire en Relations industrielles, Sciences économiques et Données statistiques à l’Université de Montréal and Past President of OCULA. You can reach him at graham.lavender@umontreal.ca.