NEWS – HLABC Anti-Racism Statement

by | 30 July 2020
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HLABC stands in solidarity with Black communities in Canada and the United States who have experienced and continue to experience the effects of systemic racism and police brutality. We oppose anti-black racism, and we stand with Black Lives Matter. 

We also oppose anti-Indigenous racism and stand with the Indigenous communities in Canada, the United States, and around the world who also experience systemic racism under the colonial systems of power that settlers have built.

We endorse the following previously released statements:

Police brutality is only one aspect of systemic racism. Racism also affects the treatment of black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) in our health care systems, leading to poorer health outcomes such as adverse birth outcomes (Alhusen, Bower, Epstein, & Sharps, 2016) and compromised communication with health care providers (Ben, Cormack, Harris, & Paradies, 2017). In our position as an organization which participates in the continuing education of our members, who themselves are positioned to provide information to members of the health care community, HLABC will participate in actively combating racism in our work. This will be an ongoing and iterative process. For now, the following actions will be taken by the Board:

  • Plan a Continuing Education event for our members this year regarding systemic racism and health librarianship. 
  • Commit to personal education around racial justice; all executive members have committed to attending at least one education session around systemic racism and librarianship in the next month. 
  • Co-presenting Mountain Pacific Health Science Library Conference, which will be offering content around racial justice, including both anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism.

We also encourage our members to take part in the following actions: 

  • Take the actions as recommended by CAPAL-ACBES (used with permission):
    • Take concrete actions to displace inherent racism in our institutions and practices;
    • To listen unequivocally to our colleagues from affected and oppressed communities;
    • Donate to and support bail funds and organizations that counter colonialism and anti-Black racism, and to support local Black businesses;
    • Embrace and promote critical reflection through critical pedagogy at our places of work;
    • Examine and revise collections, catalogues, materials, instruction, and reference services to ensure we do not promote false neutrality;
    • Advocate for active diversity in recruitment, retention, and promotion; and,
    • Work with our institutions and libraries to disrupt inherent structural racism in our hiring practices, retention efforts, and student outreach activities.
  • Contribute learning opportunities and resources in listserv
  • Contribute personal learning recaps and projects undertaken in Key Words under ‘Field Notes’ 
  • Possible readings to begin with:

We recognize that the work of dismantling racist structures must be undertaken by those that benefit from those structures. We will not burden BIPOC members with this additional work, but will welcome and lift up BIPOC voices within our organization. We welcome further suggestions from our members and will work hard to fulfil our pledge to combat racism in our work. 

Citations: 

  1. Alhusen, J.L., Bower, K.M., Epstein, E. and Sharps, P. (2016), Racial Discrimination and Adverse Birth Outcomes: An Integrative Review. Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, 61: 707-720. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmwh.12490 
  2. Ben J, Cormack D, Harris R, and Paradies Y (2017) Racism and health service utilisation: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLOS ONE 12(12): e0189900. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0189900

MEMBERSHIP – Membership for Existing Members Extended!

by | 1 June 2020
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As announced in the 2020 Annual General Meeting, existing members will have their 2019-2020 memberships extended to 2020-2021. Those who paid for June 1, 2019 – May 31, 2020 have their membership fee waived for June 1, 2020 – May 31, 2021.

Individuals who did not register for the 2019-2020 term and would like to join the 2020-2021 term are welcome to purchase registration on our website as usual: https://hlabc.chla-absc.ca/membership/join-hlabc/

SAVE THE DATE! – March 10, 2020 – Continuing Education Event HLABC/UBC Realist Review

by | 13 January 2020
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HLABC/UBC Realist Review CE Event
When: Tuesday, March 10th, 2020, 10am-3pm

Where: Sherrington Room, Woodward Library, 2198 Health Sciences Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3 (UBC)

We would like to invite you to attend The Realist Review Process March 10th, 2020 at Woodward Library’s Sherrington Room from 10am-3pm. UBC Library and HLABC are co-hosting this full day workshop. Thanks to UBC IT support, this workshop will also be available online via streaming.

The workshop presenters are Dr. Geoff Wong, Peter Wall International Visiting Scholar, and Dr. Maura MacPhee, UBC School of Nursing. This past fall they presented their work “Policy and Practice Implications for Realist Research”. In this workshop, they will be sharing their research and this research methodology with librarians. As you may know, realist reviews are part of the systematic reviews family of reviews. Realist reviews is a knowledge synthesis methodology for researchers looking at complex policy questions. It addresses the question, ‘what works, for whom, in what circumstances, and how?’ (Wong, p.2) An increasing number of researchers are receiving grants for realist reviews. This is a growing area of publication and has some interesting differences from other knowledge syntheses. Please join us to learn more about this methodology, hear about Dr. Wong and Dr. MacPhee’s realist research on teams and discuss opportunities for librarian partnerships with researchers on these reviews.

** Registration is required.

Cost (attendance in-person): $17 for HLABC Members/UBC Librarians; $8 for HLABC Student Members

Cost (attendance online): Free

Please fill out the registration form (google forms) with your details

Then proceed to payment options:


Registration type




EVENT – Dec 2, 2019 – Continuing Education Event Schedule and Registration

by | 17 November 2019
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Here are the details about the upcoming continuing education webinar that is happening on December 2, 2019 from 9 – 3 pm PST. The event is broadly covering authorship and publishing for Health Librarians. We have chosen to host the event as a webinar so members who are outside of the Vancouver/Lower Mainland region have the opportunity to a continuing education event. What is also exciting about having the event as a webinar is the ability to invite health librarians and researchers from across Canada to speak, which is why we are able to have such an extensive breadth of speakers.

If you are in the lower mainland area and don’t have a good office space to attend or don’t want to deal with the technology you are welcome to join from a teleconferencing room at Children’s and Women’s Hospital. Email Colleen for room details and directions.

If you’re interested in attending, here is a link for registration: https://forms.gle/WQRECDcUSChaujYU7




As you can see from this link, the event is free for HLABC members and $20.00 for non-members. If you’ve any questions feel free to contact Blake

Our schedule for the event is as follows with bios for each speaker below:

845 – 900 Introduction – Colleen Pawliuk & Blake Hawkins

900 – 945 Martin Morris MSc, McGill University
Title- TBD
Bio: https://www.mcgill.ca/library/librarians/martin-morris

945 – 1030 Kelly Cobey PhD, University of Ottawa
Navigating the responsibilities of biomedical publishing
Bio: Kelly Cobey is an Investigator at the OHRI and serves as the institutions Publications Officer. In this capacity she provides one-on-one consulting to researchers internal and external to the organization on topics including: open science, scientific writing, peer review, and publication metrics. She is actively involved in meta-research topics related to journalology (publication science).

1030 – 1045 BREAK

1030 – 1115 Nicole Askin MLIS, University of Manitoba
“Breaking in: Taking your first steps into publishing”.

1115 – 1200 Kevin Read MAS MLIS, University of Saskatchewan
Practicing what you preach: Incorporating data management and sharing best practices into library research projects
Bio: https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2075406439_Kevin_Read

1200 – 1215 BREAK

1215-1:00 Lise Brin MLIS, CARL
Title – TBD
Bio: Lise Brin is a Program Officer with the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL). As part of the CARL team, Lise is working on advocacy and strategy efforts primarily related to scholarly publishing, open access, and copyright. Prior to joining CARL, Lise served as Scholarly Communication Librarian at St. Francis Xavier University.

100-145 Sandra Campbell MLIS, University of Alberta
“Negotiating librarian authorship/collaboration on systematic and other reviews”
Bio: Sandy Campbell is a health librarian at the John W. Scott Health Sciences Library at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Sandy has presented and published nationally and internationally on information literacy, digital services and systematic review searching. She is particularly interested in the development of research capacity among health librarians and the recognition of librarians’ research activities.

145: – 200 BREAK

200 – 245 Christine Walde MLIS, University of Victoria – “Catalyzing Research: Grant Funding for Creation and Collaboration”
Christine Walde is the Grants and Awards Librarian at the University of Victoria Libraries, where she supports and enhances the research activities of UVic Libraries, specifically in the areas of grants funding and awards, including special projects related to community engagement. Since 2012, Walde has been instrumental in building capacity for UVic Libraries, and has secured a range of funding from public and private funders, granting agencies, and foundations. Walde was the 2018 winner of the BCALS Outstanding Contribution Award.

245 – 300 Wrap up

SAVE THE DATE! – Dec 2, 2019 – Winter Continuing Education Event

by | 15 October 2019
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Monday December 2, 2019 HLABC will be holding their Winter 2019 CE event at BC Children’s and Women’s Hospital (4500 Oak Street). The topic of the day will be publishing and author rights. If you are interested in giving a talk or would like to suggest a great speaker you’ve seen email our Continuing Education Coordinator Blake blakewesleyhawkins@gmail.com . Registration details coming soon.