Catherine Fournier-Boulianne has been selected as the 2020 winner of the BRASS Academic Business Librarianship Travel Award sponsored by Global Financial Data. The grant consists of $1,250 and is awarded to an individual new to the field of academic business librarianship in order to support attendance to the ALA Annual Conference.
Catherine Fournier-Boulianne has been a business librarian for over two years and is currently working as a tenure-track academic liaison librarian for the Institute for Management and Innovation (IMI) at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She began her career at the University of Ottawa where she worked as the librarian for the Telfer School of Management, providing liaison and teaching support at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in a broad range of programs.
In her current role, Catherine liaises with the Economics and Management Departments, as well as with cross-disciplinary graduate programs offered at IMI. She also provides instructional and research support to ICUBE, the on-campus startup incubator, as well as to other entrepreneurship and innovation-focused initiatives on campus. Catherine is based in the Li Koon Chun Finance Learning Centre, a hub for students, faculty, and researchers interested in finance that provides specialized information resources and services. There, she supports the teaching and learning of specialized software, and provides in-depth consultation, research guidance and assistance.
Over the last year, Catherine has been working with the Finance Executive in Residence to increase awareness of business resources on campus, and co-hosted several workshops on finance-related topics, focusing on developing research and analytical skills. She has also been contributing to the training of various business clubs on campus, which have been making their mark on the Collegiate Business Community, winning an unprecedented number of prestigious finance and case competitions.
Catherine has shown a significant commitment to learning about and contributing to business librarianship through both post-graduate courses and professional practice such as the Business Reference 101 course from RUSA/ALA and the Entrepreneurship 101 course from the innovation incubator MaRS Discovery District in Toronto. She is looking forward to attending her first ALA annual conference and discover the practices and ideas of leaders from beyond Canada.
Business Librarianship Travel Award committee: Orolando Duffus, Chair; Felipe Anaya; and Halley Todd.
