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From Access to Agency: Reframing Digital Libraries as Community Repositories for Community-Engaged Research Partnerships

Karim Tharani
This article investigates the conceptual and practical evolution of digital libraries designed to provide access to community repositories centred on agency, collaboration, and cultural stewardship. Grounded in the guiding principles of community-engaged research, the article identifies seven key elements essential to the design and governance of such repositories: shared ownership, knowledge reciprocity, collaborative design, community utility, relational accountability, epistemic plurality, and iterative evaluation. These elements interrogate dominant academic norms by affirming community agency over how knowledge is curated, contextualized, and disseminated. The article argues that community repositories must be co-developed through respectful and reciprocal partnerships between scholars, librarians, and communities to support cultural stewardship and epistemic equality. Shifting the focus from access to agency provides opportunity to challenge the dominant academic norms and conventional bibliographic practices by centring community voices and the legitimacy of community-sourced materials. This approach not only invites a reconfiguration of library and academic praxis to better reflect the principles of community-engaged research but also enhances visibility for marginalized knowledge traditions. Through the salutary example of the ginans, a corpus of devotional hymns central to the Ismaili Muslim community, this article shows how digital repositories can be used to transform knowledge production, support inclusive research partnerships, and recast digital libraries as active infrastructure for community‑engaged scholarship.

Upgrading UVicSpace, the University of Victoria Libraries’ Institutional Repository

Caroline Winter, Amelia Ritchie, Inba Kehoe and Danice Szabo
This case study describes the process we undertook at the University of Victoria between fall 2023 and spring 2024 to upgrade our institutional repository’s software from DSpace version 6.4 to 7.6.1. The open-source software had reached the end of its developer-support period, and some features were no longer functional. This new version offered several new and improved features that we were excited about. We provide a short history about our institutional repository; a literature review including an environmental scan of other Canadian repositories using DSpace; an explanation of our implementation strategy, user interface upgrades, workflow, and submission form changes; training we offered to our major stakeholders; the outcomes of our project; and some thoughts on future directions. We also share our lessons learned from this major upgrade of UVicSpace with the goal of helping other groups upgrade to DSpace 7 or undertake a similar repository upgrade or migration project.

From Lockdown to Pop-Up: Reimagining Reference in a Changed World

Emily Villanueva and Romany Craig
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, post-secondary libraries across Alberta have seen a significant decline in reference interactions, and the University of Lethbridge Library is no exception. Changing and limited library services during the pandemic played a role in this precipitous decline, which exceeded the downward trend in reference services that had already begun prior to the pandemic and lockdown period. With a post-secondary student population whose experience with libraries and library services was disrupted, could moving beyond the library walls and taking library services to the students bridge that gap? Following a review of various Librarian-on-Location initiatives, including roving reference, embedded librarianship, and pop-up libraries, this article outlines the development and implementation of a pop-up reference service at the University of Lethbridge Library as an innovative response to declining reference interactions. This initiative was designed to connect with students who were unaware of the resources available at the library. The first three iterations of the pop-up are discussed, including outcomes, early feedback, and challenges encountered. Findings suggest that pop-up reference services play an important role in library outreach, providing individualized experiences that students desire while eliciting reference questions that otherwise would not have been asked.

On Slowing Down and Slow Librarianship

Meg Ecclestone
This article explores my experience of time during my research leave. The opportunity to step out of my busy work life has reshaped my view of time management, slow scholarship, and the practice of slow librarianship. Slow librarianship is a deliberate rejection of achievement culture in favor of reflection, anti-oppression, and solidarity. I examine how academic time—characterized by artificial scarcity, constant acceleration, and performative busyness—has permeated library work, and how alternative temporalities might offer a way forward. Drawing on Meredith Farkas's concept of community time, I consider what library work might look like as a shared project, in which library workers contribute and provide mutual support as our capacity allows, without expectation of transactional exchange. Finally, I reflect on how I am beginning to incorporate slow librarianship principles into my own practice, including making visible the care work that sustains our communities. This essay is an invitation to step off the speeding train of academic time together and build a more care-full, communal form of library work.