The closet can make you a less effective librarian. Consider this missed opportunity to offer real help to a patron: An older man came to me at the reference desk and whispered that his adult ... Read More »

I recently visited an enormous library where I was hoping to find information on pollutants that mimic hormones and cause reproductive dysfunctions. Ninety-nine per cent of this unique library was devoted to pamphlets – many ... Read More »

There is a crisis in scholarly publishing: the sharply rising cost of journals is making it increasingly difficult for libraries, hamstrung by shrinking budgets, to acquire and disseminate the full range of current scholarly knowledge. ... Read More »

Library advocacy is more desperately needed in Quebec than in any other province. Which is why I have made a lifelong commitment to the Library Advocacy Now program and have been working toward its implementation ... Read More »

Often fighting intellectual freedom issues involves taking a deep breath and remembering that we are defending a principle as opposed to the specific material that is coming under fire. Intellectual freedom issues are seldom clear ... Read More »

I think it’s war. The forces of light and of darkness are about to come head to head, again. Each side is marshalling its weaponry. No, this is not the Balkans. It’s Canada’s next round ... Read More »

I had just finished posting on our web site the provincial government’s bill to strip the Ontario Public Library Act of funding, free access, and citizen-run library boards when I met a speech pathologist on ... Read More »

Change occurs more slowly than hypesters predict, but its impact is often more profound than expected. This is especially true of libraries in the digital age. The death of traditional libraries has been predicted for ... Read More »

Each new medium that has come along in the last century – film, radio, television, and computers – has been hailed as both a boon to education and a threat to libraries. But none of ... Read More »