Did you know that Francophonie is one of the six core values of the University of Ottawa Library? In our 2025–2030 Strategic Plan, we’ve committed to supporting the creation, dissemination and celebration of French-language knowledge, as well as Francophone cultural expression.
In this series of articles, we’ll look at different practical initiatives carried out by the Library in the following areas:
- Support of teaching with open educational resources in French
- Development of French-language collections
- Open science and knowledge dissemination in French
- Support services in French
- The Library as a hub for Francophone culture on campus
Part 4: Support services in French
Beyond its collections, the Library offers many support services to help you access the documents and content you need for your research. This includes our bilingual, real time reference service, available province-wide.
The Ask a Librarian chat service enables University of Ottawa students, faculty and researchers to receive bilingual expert research assistance in real time 67 hours a week during the academic year (and 34 hours a week during the summer).
This service is offered province-wide through a partnership with the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). As an OCUL member, the uOttawa Library provides 32 staff hours a week, helping offer French-language services across Ontario. The service is also available by texting 613-801-5796.
We’re also conducting important metadata work to make it easier for you to find French-language materials using the OMNI catalogue.
At the University of Ottawa, when we purchase a French-language document, we catalogue it in French. However, we now use a shared system with 18 Ontario libraries and their records also appear in the OMNI catalogue.
Previously, when partner libraries purchased an item in French, they would often catalogue it in English, as they didn’t have the capacity to do so in French. This had a direct impact on the discoverability of French-language documents, particularly for our Francophone users.
Our Metadata Creation team — part of the uOttawa Library’s Metadata and Cataloguing team — played a key role in implementing a new consortium-wide language policy. Since 2024, French-language documents are now catalogued in French by all 18 OMNI partner libraries.
By sharing their workflows and expertise, the uOttawa Library’s Metadata Creation team has enabled the policy’s successful adoption, creating systemic change for the Francophone community across the province.
Our Metadata Creation team is recognized for its expertise in French-language cataloguing. The team has shared its knowledge on many occasions, including at the 2025 Ontario Library Association Super Conference.
In December 2025, the Metadata Creation Team won a Best Practices Award for Francophonie and French Language Services at the uOttawa President’s Awards ceremony. This distinction recognized the team’s in-depth, systemic and collaborative approach, which has improved the discoverability of French-language materials, not only for the uOttawa community, but also across Ontario.
Our Metadata Creation Team’s daily commitment to quality is remarkable. They navigate complex international standards, adapting French records to make them fully discoverable for our community. This expert work led to the creation of over 6,700 high-quality French records being created in 2025.
Finally, the Library also carries out important identity management work to increase the discoverability of University of Ottawa researchers. Such is the case with the Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO).
NACO is administered by the Library of Congress and allows participating institutions to contribute authority records for the names of people, companies, jurisdictions, etc. The NACO Authority File provides the proper terms for names to be used by libraries around the world to ensure standard access to library resources. If two or more authors have the same name, having a unique NACO author identity helps to avoid confusion in bibliographic descriptions and guarantees works are linked to the right creator.
Since 2022, four members of the Library’s Metadata and Cataloguing team became independent NACO contributors, enabling them to create and review name authority records (NARs). The goal of our NACO group is to disambiguate the names of uOttawa professors and researchers appearing in our catalogue and promote their work.
That’s how we’ve created or modified over 1,550 NARs! This work provides greater exposure for our researchers, supports the management of uOttawa scholarly communications; and enhances the discoverability of our research materials worldwide.
Don’t miss the next article in this series, “The Library as a hub for Francophone culture on campus.”
Find out more
- Watch the presentation “La Bibliothèque : votre partenaire pour la recherche et l’enseignement en français” (in French) (September 25, 2025)
- Download the University of Ottawa Library Strategic Plan 2025–2030