offers eight Tools for use by library staff as they work out in community spaces with socially excluded individuals. The Toolkit is based in the Project’s real-life experiences and the lessons shared are based on some of our challenges and successes.

Also published recently are two new reports (here and here) by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on the growing economic inequalities in Canada.

The President’s FY 2009 Budget Estimate includes $18 million for the USDA National Agricultural Library, a $4 million reduction from the FY 2008 Budget estimate, and $6 million less than the FY 2007 actual budget for the Library.

Significant changes proposed by ARS include redirecting $993,000 in AWIC funds to support NAL participation in a new digital portal for veterinary medicine; eliminating funding for the National Agricultural Law Center, the nation’s leading source for agricultural and food law research and information, which complements and works with NAL, which does not cover these areas; and most importantly, reducing funding for non-digital content/document delivery/Special Collections by $3,000,000.

As a national library, the print collection is core to researchers and the agricultural history of the nation. It is this reduction of $3,000,000 for the print collections that is of immediate concern. In FY 2007, NAL document delivery services filled 29,000 requests from the NAL collection for materials which were available in print-only–not available electronically. In FY 20009, such requests for print-only materials would not be filled.

The ramifications of the proposed reductions or redirections of NAL funding include not only the inability for NAL to fill requests for materials available only in print, but the complete cessation of book and journal purchases, and the inability to catalog and make available print materials already acquired. In addition, cancellation of the receipt of free publications from the U.S. and other countries would have a major impact. In recent years the USDA required all USDA-authored publications to be delivered to the NAL; but what good is this if there no money to catalog them and make them findable?

Update: the date has been changed from April 29 to May 15. Michael Geist and others will be speaking at the event.

Quote from Jens Erik’s entry:

Classifications are political instruments… all classifications make epistemological, ethical, and political statements; there is nothing new to this. The library blogshere seems to argue that POPLINE’s move is unprecedented and unacceptable… get a grip; what is the ethical assumption behind Dewey’s religion section? I don’t see any ethical justification in the introduction to LCSH…

While blocking a search term was an obvious misuse of what Hope Olson refers to as “the power to name”, this situation begs the question of how we decide what terms are included in classification schemes in the first place, and how we navigate who has a say in describing research documents. While the Harper and Bush governments are making the politics of information more obvious, the professional can take advantage of the controversies to give these kinds of issues in classification a higher profile in professional discourse.

How we construct subjects: A feminist analysis. Hope Olson.
List of Hope Olson’s Publications.

Participatory Appraisal and Arrangement for Multicultural Archival Collections, Katie Shilton and Ramesh Srinivasan

The word is that “abortion” as a search term is being restored and an investigation will ensue. The American Library Association was quick to condemn any policy that gives priority to ideology over scientific inquiry.

UPDATE. April 5.
New York Times article.

Blog post from Women’s Health Matters including statement by Johns Hopkins Dean.

-PC-

Jim Prentice says there is nothing he can do about throttling since the Internet is not publicly regulated. According to a colleague, Bell or Rogers subscribers should complain about ISP service to the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services, since “this may be the only recourse for consumers who are being charged additionally for bandwidth, even as that bandwidth is being unfairly limited”.

In the meantime, Canadians for Democratic Media have set up an action alert “Stop the Throttler!”, where you can send a letter to Minister Prentice.

House of Commons Question Period transcript from April 2.

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP):
Mr. Speaker, average Canadians are being ripped off by the telecom giants which are arbitrarily throttling information on the Internet. This is about a practice of a few large players being able to squeeze out smaller competition.

What steps will the Minister of Industry take to ensure that consumers who paid for access are not going to be ripped off, that badly needed competition will not be squeezed off, and send a message to the telecom giants that they have no business monkey wrenching with the free flow of information?

Hon. Jim Prentice (Minister of Industry, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, for the edification of my friend, the Internet is not regulated in Canada. We continue to monitor the discussion that is taking place, but there is no regulation of the relationship between Internet providers and consumers.

We will continue to see how the issue unfolds.

Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP):
Mr. Speaker, the minister’s hands-off approach to hands-on interference is bad news for the development of a Canadian innovation agenda. Net neutrality is the cornerstone of an innovative economy, because it is the consumer and the innovator who need to be in the driver’s seat, not Ma Bell, not Rogers, not Vidéotron. They have no business deciding what information is in the fast lane or what information is in the slow lane.

Will the minister come out of the Gestetner age and take action on the issue of net throttling?

Hon. Jim Prentice (Minister of Industry, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, I think virtually all members of the House could agree that if anyone inhabits the Gestetner age, it is the New Democratic Party. Members of that party would carry our country into the economic backwater that they propose.

We have a well advanced Internet system in this country. It is not publicly regulated. At this point in time we will continue to leave the matter between consumers on the one hand and Internet service providers on the other.

Yes we did make a change in POPLINE. We recently made all abortion terms stop words. As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now.

You can contact POPLINE here. You could ask that they make an announcement of this change on their website and provide a clear explanation as to why this term was eliminated.

POPLINE, is a database on reproductive health, population, family planning, and related health issues. It’s maintained by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Center for Communication Programs and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

UPDATE: Women’s Health News has a great post on the topic, identifying work-arounds for the problem (for example, browsing the subject index instead of doing a search will retrieve articles on abortion).

Now if only something could be done to restore funding to our own Environment Canada libraries.

Michael Geist wrote a great post about the whole thing two days ago, and points to a Facebook group. The Council of Canadians has also set up an action alert, asking Canadians to write to the Minister of Industry, Jim Prentice.

This is another issue of Net Neutrality. Comcast in the US has been taken to task for doing the exact same thing. (They are now collaborating with BitTorrent - the company - to address more effectively issues of network management). The Canadian government and the CRTC should definitely be looking at setting up clear and enforceable rules to protect Net Neutrality.