Highlights from the year

Making knowledge more accessible

Access to knowledge is one of the Library’s defining contributions to the Concordia community. Across the year, Concordians accessed course reserves and open textbooks, downloaded more than a million scholarly articles, requested materials from other institutions, deposited new research in Spectrum, and read open access books published by Concordia University Press—and the Library made all of this more accessible through our heavily-used technology lending program.

Leading AI literacy conversations

Over the past few years, the Library has supported the Concordia community in navigating foundational questions about AI. Building on its early leadership in this emerging area, in 2025–2026, the Library collaborated with several other units across campus and McGill Libraries to develop the GenAI Quickstart for Students modules and expanded its AI literacy web pages with resources for students, faculty, and staff.

Preserving and providing access to unique collections

In 2025–2026, the Library continued its commitment to preserve and provide access to unique records of marginalized groups in Quebec and Canada. Thanks to in-house expertise, the Library advanced two major digital preservation projects that will keep important oral histories and at-risk audio-visual materials accessible for future teaching, learning, research, and community memory.

Looking back on 2025–2026

Every day, Concordia Library connects people with what they need to learn, create, teach, and discover. This Impact Report looks back on a year of supporting students, instructors, researchers, and community members through access to welcoming spaces, trusted expertise, essential resources, distinctive collections, and new opportunities for sharing knowledge. From helping students access the tools and materials they need, to saving students and researchers time and money through shared resources, expert support, and barrier-free access to information, the stories and numbers that follow show the Library team’s work in action.

Student success

Leading critical conversations about AI literacy

Since 2023, the Library has been helping our community learn and think about artificial intelligence. This past year, in collaboration with several other units on campus and McGill Libraries, the Library developed GenAI Quickstart for Students, a series of five interactive, bilingual modules. These modules provide students with foundational knowledge and scenarios for thinking through the role AI tools may have in their academic lives. How can students act with academic integrity at the forefront of their choices? How can they be sure that any use of AI supports their learning instead of replacing it?

This year, the Library also expanded the AI literacy section of the website with guidance on critical perspectives, information on academic AI tools, and advice on acknowledging AI use.

Experiential learning in Special Collections

The Library welcomed two student residents in summer 2025 as part of the Black History Archives Student Residency in Special Collections and Archives. Badewa Ajibade, Humanities (PhD), and Aisha Abdunnur, Economics (BA), spent eight weeks exploring and activating the Black History and community archives in our collection. Residents in this program learn about archives and archival theory; primary and secondary sources; citing archival records; copyright and restrictions; and how to use a finding aid and handle archival material.

Library services for students by students

Since 2010, undergraduates have contributed $1 per credit to the Library Services Fund. The Fund is managed by the Library Services Fund Committee and supports students with carefully conceived resources and services to inspire academic success.

In the 2025–2026 academic year, the Committee approved the following projects:

• New Media & Data Hub featuring Mac minis and specialized software (in progress for fall 2026)
• Professional-grade podcasting equipment that will be made available in a bookable studio (in progress for fall 2026)
• Two individual study pods in Webster Library (complete), with more to be installed in Webster and Vanier Libraries in future years
• New tablets and equipment for loan: 40 additional iPad Pros (10 at Vanier Library, 30 at Webster Library); 40 keyboard/folio cases; 20 additional Apple Pencils (complete)
• Ongoing funding for:
  • Open textbook grants
  • 24-hour access to Webster and Vanier Libraries
  • Textbook loans through Course Reserves
  • Loans of high-demand technology items
  • Supplies for the Technology Sandbox

The Technology Sandbox is a popular space for creativity, experimentation and project-based learning in the Library. The Library Services Fund allows for the purchase of specialized equipment and tools that are made available to students at no cost. Through workshops, equipment loans, and self-directed projects, students gain practical experience with technologies such as 3D printing, virtual reality, electronics, video and audio creation and fibre arts. Consumable supplies and equipment replacement are also covered by this fund, keeping these opportunities accessible to all students, allowing for interdisciplinary experimentation and digital skills development.

The Committee has continued bringing artwork from the Art Volt Collection into Library spaces, adding colour, creativity, and a visible connection to Concordia’s emerging artists. Art Volt is an alumni art marketplace for recent graduates of the Faculty of Fine Arts. With support from the Library Services Fund, the Library now showcases three Art Volt works at Vanier Library and four at Webster Library. The artwork is chosen by the Committee each year and highlights a changing selection of recently graduated Concordia artists.

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Advancing research and scholarship

Providing vital scholarly resources

The Library’s electronic collections provide access to a vast range of scholarly content, and 1.3 million full-text articles were downloaded this year.

In addition, through interlibrary loan services, students and researchers accessed thousands of articles, chapters, and books from other institutions. The value of these items if purchased individually would have totaled an estimated $487,000.

Preserving collections

Digitization of at-risk audio-visual collections

The Library’s Special Collections and Archives has worked to identify and digitize at-risk analog audio-visual items in its collections. To help ensure that the content stored on magnetic media, including audio and video reels, UMatic tapes, and audio cassettes, remains accessible into the future, it is essential to digitize and preserve alternate copies.

Among the recordings being digitized are a significant number of items from artist-run centres in Quebec, predominantly from 1970 to 1999, showcasing the works of creators working outside of mainstream cultural scenes. They contain recordings of live music events, performances, exhibitions, artworks, and conversations with artists, musicians, performers, actors, and other creators from Quebec’s Black, People of Colour, 2SLGBTQI+, and alternative and counterculture arts communities.

Oral history collections

In partnership with the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS), the Library’s Special Collections and Archives has been working to transfer and preserve the audio-visual oral histories gathered by COHDS since their founding in 2006. This project is possible thanks to expertise developed in preserving oral histories through the Library’s previous involvement as research partners in the SpokenWeb project. The Library will preserve originals and copies of these important histories, helping to ensure that they are accessible for teaching, learning, and research in the long-term. This transfer project will continue throughout 2026 and 2027.

Supporting researchers

Scholarly infrastructure

The Spectrum repository provides infrastructure for open scholarship, designed to preserve and centralize access to research created at Concordia. Concordia researchers can deposit their preprints and accepted journal manuscripts in Spectrum to make their work openly accessible, satisfying many funding agency requirements. In addition, theses, conference papers, book chapters, presentations, and other research outputs that reflect our community’s scholarly and creative activity can be uploaded.

1,005 new Concordia research outputs were deposited into Spectrum in 2025–2026 (including theses), an 18% increase from the previous year.

Support for funding agency compliance

In response to the Tri-Agency and Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ) transition to the Narrative CV assessment this year, the Office of Research and the Library collaborated to provide Narrative CV support for Concordia researchers. Six in-person workshops were held at the Vanier and the Webster Libraries, engaging 115 researchers and strengthening institutional readiness for evolving grant evaluation requirements. The Library continues to hold Data Management Plan (DMP) workshops focusing on Tri-Agency DMP requirements and tools and maintains resources for developing exemplary DMPs. As research data management requirements expand, the Library will be prepared to meet the demand for these sessions.

Concordia University Press published four new titles in 2025–2026:

• Literary Life After Death: Commemorations of Writers in English-Speaking Canada by Carole Gerson
• Diffracting the North: Contemporary Latinx Canadian Experiences and Practices in Film, New Media, and Visual Arts edited by Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Analays Álvarez Hernández and Zaira Zarza
• The House Is (Not) a Prison: On the Queerness of Architecture by Colin Ripley
• The Pornographic Delicatessen: Midcentury Montréal's Erotic Art, Media, and Spaces by Matthew Purvis

These titles, as well as past titles, are all available for sale through the traditional book market, but also available for free on Spectrum, Concordia’s institutional repository, and on Manifold, a platform hosted by the Library. The Press’s titles are purchased and read all around the world, with as much as one third of annual sales to the US and overseas. Such reach shares the innovative research of Canadian scholars, spreads awareness of Concordia University’s ongoing commitments to open scholarship and promotes the institution’s name as a leading place of research innovation and interdisciplinary activity.

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Supporting teaching and learning

Cost savings

Open textbooks

Open textbooks offer students financial savings, tailored learning, and enhanced accessibility for Concordia’s diverse learners. The Library’s Open Educational Resources (OER) program provides funding and publishing infrastructure to support the adoption, customization, and creation of open textbooks for use in undergraduate courses.

In courses where an open textbook was used in 2025–2026, each student saved an average of $97 per course compared to purchasing a commercial alternative. Concordia students have reported that cost savings on textbooks allow them to spend money on rent, clothes, shoes, vet bills, hobbies, therapy, movies and food.

The Library has 12 active open textbooks and 7 in progress. Two open textbooks were launched in 2025–2026:

Teaching collaborations

Students make excellent use of library spaces and resources in all the usual ways, but the Library can also be a site for very creative experiential learning! Collaborating with the Faculty of Fine Arts, we welcomed undergraduate students in a course on site-specific performance who developed and gave a series of small performances in the Library—all while respecting our code of conduct policy so as not to disturb the work of others. In areas that allow conversation, you might encounter a small theatrical exchange; in a quiet area, there may be a brief, silent dance.