Guest post by Nicole Maunsell, of the SLAIS LIBR 561 Information Policy class.

It was a small group at our telecom policy discussion, as others were lured to the more flashy net neutrality and copyright discussions. At first we weren’t sure we’d have much to say. Turns out we were wrong about that: it’s more exciting than you think. No, really. I can’t tell you all the sexy details (part of our plan to make telecom policy more enticing), so I’ll focus on what I got out of the discussion as a SLAIS student.

We talked about how to raise awareness of the issues, and who might do it. Something as simple as monitoring the CRTC for consultation announcements could be done by one person who wouldn’t necessarily need to be an expert. Because experts in this area are really hard to find. It’s a big, intimidating topic, and as the students in our group reminded us, who has the time?

So the solution is building it into our already overloaded activities. What if advocacy work was taught as part of the core curriculum in library school? After all, we’re told over and over again that advocacy and social activism are reasons we should be proud of our chosen profession. One of our wishlist items that we came up with during the session was a Citizen’s Guide to telecom policy. We believe people would care about these issues if they understood how it affected them. The Citizen’s Guide would have a glossary, illustrative examples, tips on how to take action and an accompanying action plan with recommendations for how to tailor the messages for the vastly different audiences that telecom policy affects. Something like that might take quite awhile, but it could be done as a series of SLAIS professional experiences (library or archival work for course credit). That is, if no one’s willing to find the cash to pay someone to do it, which would be lovely.

It’s a big goal, but a necessary long-term one. In the meantime, anyone want to volunteer to monitor the CRTC and notify BCLA when they have public consultations on issues pertaining to telecom policy?