A librarian at Laurentian University was recognized for extraordinary service during the CAUT Council meeting in Ottawa on April 28.

Ashley Thomson was acknowledged with the CAUT Academic Librarians’ and Archivists’ Distinguished Service Award for his work in advancing the status and/or working conditions of librarians and ar­chivists at Canadian universities and colleges.

Thomson has been a librarian at Laurentian since 1975. He is the co-author or co-editor of eight books and has published scholarly articles and hundreds of book reviews. He is also one of the two official bibliographers of the Margaret Atwood Society.

Early in his career, he played an instrumental role in ensuring professional recognition and improving working conditions for librarians within his workplace. Thomson maintains it was a CAUT document highlighting the academic status of the profession that served as his inspiration in the mid-1970s.

“Those guidelines stressed how important it was for librarians to be considered on the same level as faculty members. They highlighted the similarities between the roles and pointed out that librarians — because they, like professors, are fully invested in promoting a university’s educational and intellectual mission — should benefit not only from the same status as academic faculty members, but should also be bound by the rights and responsibilities associated with that status,” he recalls.

Over the period in question, Thomson and several of his colleagues persuaded the other librarians and the Laurentian University Faculty Association (LUFA) to allow them to enter into negotiations. The president of Laurentian University at the time was Edward J. Monahan, former assistant executive secretary of CAUT.

“He couldn’t exactly call the CAUT guidelines into question, and he probably wouldn’t have dared to try, since, as rumour had it, his wife was a librarian,” laughs Thomson. Along the way, Thomson and his group had constructive successes in evening out the ranks and pay scales among faculty members.

But his major contribution came with the negotiations for the first collective agreement at Laurentian in 1980 where, as chief negotiator, Thomson convinced his teaching faculty colleagues and the administration to give faculty status to librarians.

“What I especially liked about those new conditions, was that having faculty status meant that librarians who wanted to move up the ranks and climb the pay scale could do so without getting into management, the traditional path of library advancement.” Thomson said.

The award committee recognized this achievement as “an enormous breakthrough that opened the way for associations to press for equal rights for academic librarians and archivists across Canada. The agreement remains a landmark in higher education.”

Thomson has been speaker of senate at Laurentian since 2006 and has served on the LUFA executive for many years. He is a firm believer in serving the community and his peers. As a union leader, he initiated a program of collaborative projects such as introducing a newsletter, developing a website and creating a mentoring system to support colleagues.

“All of these steps along the way reflect my way of thinking, namely that unions that serve their members interests beyond the bargaining table are more likely to get the support they might need from their members when bargaining time comes around,” Thomson maintains.