Anyone familiar with UofT’s flagship humanities and social sciences Robart’s library knows that it’s the target of a lot of well earned potshots. Here are a few of its better known claims to fame:

is it sinking?
‘Brutalist’ architecture
it’s a peacock … !?

The ‘prison’ analogy is another fave, what with the books cloistered into […]

The Torontoist has more great commentary on what’s wrong with the sponsorship deal that set up the MAPs program at the Toronto Public Library.

Jonathan Goldsbie notes this quote from library board member Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler who voted against the deal.

“Corporate sponsorship might be nice in theory to some people, but […]

*Scroll down for news about the London Public Library’s decision to implement internet filtering*

Not that I want to interrupt the letter you’re writing to the LPL board of directors, but as luck would have it, this would be the week that Canadian representatives decided to make life difficult at the World Intellectual Property Organization Development […]

To add on to Sabina’s earlier post … now that Siobhan Stevenson’s call for keeping the public domain in public libraries has cracked into the public domain itself through First Monday, it’s time to talk turkey.

First, let me wax poetic for a moment and say that isn’t it great to be a […]

Oy, librarians! No doubt you’ve already heard. But in case you haven’t, the push for direct-to-consumer advertising in Canada is marching on. However, if you like acronyms, it’s DTCA.

CanWest Global Communications Corporation stands to increase its profits should a lawsuit they are waging in the name of ‘freedom of expression’ succeed. […]

Congratulations go out to Marcel LaFlamme of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College in Boston, MA. for his essay entitled “Towards a Progressive Discourse on Community Needs Assessment: Perspectives from Collaborative Ethnography and Action Research.”

LaFlamme’s essay will be published in an upcoming edition of the PLG Journal. […]

The Internet Library of Early Journals is a digitized collection of journals from the 18th and 19th centuries.

(via MetaFilter)

- JH

(Thanks to Kerry M. for the tip!)

- JH

We’ve highlighted a couple sites in the past that offer free e-book downloads but this page has a comprehensive list of all the options online for getting free e-books and tree-books.

(I love that the title of the post where I saw it on MetaFilter is “The Best Place To Get Free Books” and […]

The Toronto Star’s latest piece in its series on medical secrecy today brought with it some good news for Ontarians.

The word is … no more secrets, no more lies. The stage has been set for Ontario to be the leaders in medical transparency in Canada.

Not only will mortality and morbidity […]