Tomorrow’s History & the Role of Public Libraries

I’ve been thinking about digitization and history; specifically the trusim that history is written by the victors (aka the privileged), and what that means for our current era.
With literacy and war-conquests-slash-oppression on the part of literate groups, orality became devalued as “official” history in most of the mainstream, dominant, Western societies.  Non-literate or illiterate people [...]

Irresponsible health news reporting redux: the CBC on bone density & breast cancer

Can you stand to hear me kvetch again about irresponsible health reporting?
Today it’s the CBC (among others), whose health headline screams: Bone density level may act as predictor of breast cancer
It’s one of those articles without a byline, and the nameless reporter who penned this brief article clearly has no idea what they are [...]

Further thoughts on the POPLINE debacle: what went right?

Rachel Walden’s follow-up post on POPLINE has given me a kick in the pants to get moving on my own follow-up post. (Yes, the one that I alluded to months ago…)
I’ve been thinking about the POPLINE debacle. While Rachel rightly points out that all is not perfectly resolved, and we await more answers, [...]

Childbirth may not be suitable for minors

A family friend had a baby this morning! Yay! My five year old was quite put out that he was not able to watch the baby being born. As a consolation prize, I promised to YouTube some birth videos for him in lieu of tonight’s bedtime stories. I had a nice set of links emailed [...]

POPLINE and government barriers to information on “controversial” topics

I saw it first at Rachel’s blog, but you may have seen it any number of places by now:

Making the rounds of librarian emails, listservs and blogs in the past day or so is the news that POPLINE, “the world’s largest database on reproductive health, containing citations with abstracts to scientific articles, [...]

CHN Closure Part IV: Americanization or obfuscation?

In my non-librarian alter-ego, I teach women’s/gender studies at a college. The class of my heart (don’t most teachers have these – the one or two courses they just love the most?) is a women’s health course. I love it for multiple reasons. I find it fascinating to explore the intersection between two [...]

Victoria Library Lockout & the Lazy Doctor’s approach to Pay Equity

Last week’s Victoria Times Colonist featured an update on the library lockout, “As library lockout drags on, employer’s side says it will examine wages paid elsewhere.”
The management says they’re going to take a few weeks to gather data on payscales for similar jobs in other library systems around the province, such as Vancouver, Richmond, [...]

Greater Victoria Library Lockout

This type of library website might be an all too familiar sight for residents of British Columbia, one of four Canadian provinces without pay equity legislation.
Just a few months after Vancouver librarians returned to the job after a strike, Greater Victoria’s nine public library branches are now closed indefinitely, leaving the public without services [...]

Enough already with the “boys left behind” shtick

Any of you in North America who work in public libraries, college libraries, schools, or who are raising kids have probably heard the refrain. I see it in the news all the time. I see it in our provincial library association’s children’s division newsletter. I see it in the flyers that are [...]