LibrarianActivist.org

Chip Ward’s illuminating article on how the library has become a de facto ’shelter’ in place of the state’s shrunken safety net provides an excellent opportunity to look at how ppl who are often perceived as non-citizens, non-persons, non-existant nuisances in the collective conscience are reclaiming their power and identities.

Here are some props to ‘information’ efforts that seek to give voiceless groups space to speak for themselves by putting the media in their own hands.

First is Homeless Nation, a Canada wide non-profit organization that provides an online community and forum for homeless people to express their point of view, and an opportunity for the public to interact with and learn some things about being homeless in Canada. Launched in [June] no, April of 2006, membership has grown to over 2000 participants.

Mentions of Homeless Nation in the media can be found here and here and in Rabble podcasts here.

Second is an archives that is documenting the history and cultural heritage of people who’ve been in contact with the psychiatric system.

Librarians, carve out a wee moment in your hectic schedules check out the Psychiatric Survivor Archives, Toronto. It’s a forum and space that aims to preserve the history of psychiatric survivors for current and future generations. PSAT seeks to create an opportunity to restore a sense of agency and personhood to psychiatric survivors, to value their lived experience, history and culture, and to engage a voiceless and stigmatized population in the democratic process of self expression.

Articles here and here published recently in the Toronto Star speak to MAD pride, a movement akin to the ‘queering’ of gay/lesbian culture.

- PC

The Alberta government is currently travelling the province asking for input for its Climate Change Strategy. For those who are unable to attend the consultations, the government has designed an online survey which asks what steps the government should take (short of legislation, essentially) to curb provincial pollution and emissions, as well as what steps individuals should take. The survey is basically a checklist of things individuals can do to reduce their ecological footprints and there is little mention of regulating or addressing the enormous problems created by the oil/gas and industrial agriculture sectors.

The first question-statement in the survey is “Alberta will maintain a vibrant economy and high quality of life while addressing this global issue.” That sets out the priorities, doesn’t it?

According to a study published last month by PollutionWatch (a joint project of the Canadian Environmental Law Association and Environmental Defense), Alberta is the national leader in air pollutants (producing 27% of the national total in 2005) and greenhouse gas emissions (a whopping 40% of the national total!) — all this in a province that is home for only 10% of the country’s population. Question three in the survey reads “Alberta will lead Canadian provinces in the use of renewable and alternative energy sources.” Not bloody likely.

I’m going to ask the local libraries to publicize these data for the hearings — and to encourage their patrons to participate. We’re being told by the government that we’re the cleanest, greenest, most enviro-friendly province in the country. What’s up with the Conservatives doing the greenwash thing? I reckon it’s simply the easiest way to distract everyone while they continue with business as usual, maintaining that “vibrant economy and high quality of life.”

The survey should be used as the model for manipulative survey design in library school Research Methods courses: how you can manipulate the answers by framing the questions. The survey is well-worth the read.

-SIO

These are the surveillance cameras in George Orwell’s London neighbourhood.

funny, and ironically disturbing.

addendum: on second thought, it’s just plain disturbing -PC

via Digg and thisislondon

-PC

This is really cute and fun:

I haven’t had a chance to read this, but here is Google’s explanation of the Katrina images from the Google blog:

About the New Orleans imagery in Google Maps and Earth
Monday, April 02, 2007 at 6:50:00 AM
Posted by John Hanke, Director, Google Maps/Local/Earth

This weekend, there has been a lot of discussion about our imagery of New Orleans in Google Maps and Google Earth. I thought I’d give you some background that may clear things up, and also let you know about new imagery of the region now available.

In 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, a very motivated group of volunteers at Google worked with NOAA, NASA, and others to post updated imagery of the affected areas in Google Maps and Google Earth as quickly as possible. This data served as a useful reference for many people — from those interested in understanding what had happened, to friends and families checking on the status of loved ones and property, to rescuers and relief workers. Shortly after the event, we received a voicemail thanking us for the role Google Earth played in guiding rescuers to stranded victims.

Several months later, in September 2006, the storm imagery was replaced with pre-Katrina aerial photography of much higher resolution as part of a regular series of global data enhancements. We continued to make available the Katrina imagery, and associated overlays such as damage assessments and Red Cross shelters, on a dedicated site (earth.google.com/katrina.html). Our goal throughout has been to produce a global earth database of the best quality — accounting for timeliness, resolution, cloud cover, light conditions, and color balancing.

Given that the changes that affected New Orleans happened many months ago, we were a bit surprised by some of these recent comments. Nevertheless, we recognize the increasingly important role that imagery is coming to play in the public discourse, and so we’re happy to say that we have been able to expedite the processing of recent (2006) aerial photography for the Gulf Coast area (already in process for an upcoming release) that is equal in resolution to the data it is replacing. That new data was published in Google Earth and Google Maps on Sunday evening.

Make no mistake, this wasn’t any effort on our part to rewrite history. But it looks like this April Fool’s joke was on us.

_DJ_