DTCA, part I – The CanWest Legal Challenge

This is the first of what I’m sure will end up being several posts on Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of prescription drugs. It’s an issue I never thought too much about as it silently crept into our magazines and televisions in the US, but once living in Canada and working in health policy, my eyes were [...]

Holiday hiatus

Hope everyone has had a lovely time the past week or so whatever you do or do not celebrate this time of year.
While my co-bloggers have been visiting family I have been home sick but enjoying time with the kiddo nonetheless, the NIH Open Access mandate has finally been signed into law!
Expect regularly scheduled blog [...]

CLA making the news with Copyright Advocacy

The Canadian Library Association is in the news today – and in a positive light, no less! The CBC headline reads “Libraries urge Ottawa to consider consumers in drafting copyright law.”
While most of us in library-land are well aware of our tireless efforts to protect patron privacy, further intellectual freedom, push for access to [...]

Internet literacy, three ways

Over the last week or so, I’ve been following very different, but equally interesting, threads about internet and technology literacy. Each offers a different slice of a wide problem, and I think comparing the three together presents interesting contrasts.
The first take on internet literacy comes by way of a colleague of mine who teaches classes [...]

OA Milestones – w00t!

We’ve been counting down, and, today….
A big HOORAY for the Directory of Open Access Journals reaching 3,000 journals today – and to Eprints for LIS passing 7,000 documents last week!
Congratulations to the hardworking folk behind both DOAJ and E-LIS!
And to our readers:
Do you edit/review or write for/belong to a society that publishes an [...]

On Book Ratings and Empathy

The ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom blog has a post up titled “OIF and other organizations oppose book ratings system in West Virginia school system.” The jist is that, as a result of a parental book challenge in a high school, the Kanawa County school board is apparently now considering some sort of rating system [...]

Housing and Accessing the Record of a Genocide

Over on Feministe, contributor Anne has an interesting post on the fate of the archives documenting the proceedings and findings of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). These archives include case files, transcripts, confidential records and audio/visual materials that document the brutal history of the Rwandan genocide.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/12/10/the-archives-of-a-genocide-where-do-they-stay/
According to Anne (who attended a [...]

“Future Reading” and the digital divide

A few of weeks ago I came across an article in the New Yorker by Anthony Grafton entitled “Future Reading” that first interested me because of the really cool drawing involving a library and google.
The article started with the well known recantment of the role libraries play as a place of knowledge, their history, [...]

Archives, accountability, and the deleted CIA interrogation tapes

News about the deletion of CIA tapes of “harsh” interrogation techniques is getting a lot of coverage in U.S. papers. (See The Washington Post and The New York Times). Why bring it up here? Because it directly illustrates the tensions between memory, forgetting, and accountability in records.
The CIA’s public justification for the deletion of [...]

Heads up: More on privatization of Canadian health information/care

Mark Rabnett has a lovely post up on his blog, Shelved in the W’s, on Tennyson, the CHN shutdown and two-tiered health systems.
Just as we have tiers to our health care system here in Canada – “medically necessary” care for all, but increasingly also pay-for-priority care for those who can afford it – so have [...]