By freedom I understand social conditions of such a kind that the expression of opinions and assertions about general and particular matters of knowledge will not involve dangers or serious disadvantages for him who expresses them. This freedom of communication is indispensable for the development and extension of scientific knowledge, a consideration of much practical […]

I know this has nothing to do with activism… but I couldn’t help it. The “Make your own Simpson” going around the LIB blogosphere is too much fun. I did a little bit of quick and dirty Photoshop alterations to make it more … realistic (?).

Kim Antieau has written an open letter to the library board of the Fort Vancouver Regional Library to express her anger over the board’s decision to filter the internet on the libary’s computers. It seems as though (although it isn’t explicitly clear in the letter) that the decision was taken in the hopes of getting […]

Olivier Charbonneau realized there was no entry for Information Commons in Wikipedia. So he wrote his own small entry. Then, he decided to create his own Wiki on the subject. Check out the Information Commons Wiki and contribute!

It’s that time of year again, Freedom to Read Week. On that topic, Toni Samek gave a interview to the University of Alberta Radio CSJR. In her words:The interview was an opportunity to talk about librarians as part of the Freedom to Read initiatives — but about librarianship in general. .

The show will […]

In August 2004, in Buenos Aires, there was the 1st Social Forum of Information, Documentation and Libraries. Among other things, it accomplished the following: The main outcome was that it raised the need to continue a permanent forum that has its presence through committes and working groups which will focus primarily on subjects like user […]

The BCLA is at it again, creating really interesting and inspiring conferences. This year’s is entitled “Sharing a Vision: the power of collaboration”. Here are some of the many interesting presentations:

Including the Socially Excluded: Community development strategies for public libraries: One of the speakers, Annette de Faveri, is part of the “Working Together Project”, […]

Next Sunday, on the Sunday Edition of CBC Radio One, there should be a really interesting debate about: the trade-offs between security and privacy. What information do governments need to keep us safe? What protections do citizens have from intrusions? What is the importance of privacy in a democracy?

There is a slew of really interesting […]

Thinking of the contraversy surrounding the publication of the Mahomet cartoons, and having read opinions both for and against their publication, I was thinking today that this situation really highlights the raison d’être of the Living Library. This was a project at the Malmö Public Library in Sweden where they would “lend” people of minority, […]

If any of you are looking for an open source solution to thesauri management, perhaps you could take a look at ThemaTres. This is how the Argentinean developper describes his product:TemaTres is a web application to manage documentation languages - especially good at hierarchical thesauri and cataloging vocabularies but also useful for navigation structures.