Leslie Weir: An innovative librarian who led the way to digital access

Canada Foundation for Innovation

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Leslie Weir, the first female university librarian at the University of Ottawa, led a team who received $20 million from the CFI in 1997 to help 64 Canadian university libraries make the leap from print to digital. Prior to the Canadian Site Licensing Project, researchers — or their grad students, Weir says coyly — would physically track down articles in paper journals buried in the library stacks. After the project was launched in the early 2000s, Weir says researchers had access to more digital publications than they’d ever had before. That blast of on-demand information fundamentally shifted how research was done in Canada and became a model for countries around the world. In this podcast, Weir talks about her path to becoming the innovative librarian who led this project, with a story that begins on a day that tragedy shook the world.

This podcast is part of an International Women’s Day podcast series called Groundbreakers.