IRHR Librarian Vicki Skelton will begin a one-year research leave starting in January 2021.
Vicki has been the full-time head librarian since July 2008. She first started in the library in 1985, working part-time with now-retired librarians Bruce Pearce and Elizabeth Perry.
In a recent interview featured on the IRHR Library Instagram account, Vicki shared some details of what she will be working on during her leave:
“The tumblr that is the basis for our weekly newsletter, PWR: work&labour news& research, which I have edited for 13 years with the support of brilliant FIS graduate students. It is a big part of my academic and professional work as a librarian at the CIRHR. I am proposing to make the current tumblr into a much more user friendly database for disseminating grey (gray) literature in our multi-disciplinary field.”
PWR: work&labour news&research is distributed to the membership of the Canadian Industrial Relations Association (CIRA/ACRI) and has been sent out subscribers to Lancaster House publishing since it began in 2002. It was named after Elizabeth Perry (editor 2002-2006) upon her retirement. The title has evolved to include the tumblr and we now call it the PWR. It is a newsletter for the CIRHR students, faculty, alumni, academics and interested people across Canada, the United States and globally – anyone with an interest in IR/HR as the content is intended to keep researchers, companies, workers, and governments aware of the latest information related to IR/HR disciplines for the purposes of research, understanding and debate.
While Vicki is on leave, the IRHR Library will be in the capable hands of Library Technician Sarah Morgan, work study students Claire Buission, Francesca Rouselle and Victoria Yang—and new IRHR Librarian Manda Vrkljan.