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The DemTech Symposium is a pre-conference of the Canadian Library Association’s Annual Congress and Trade Show, organized by the Information Commons Interest Group. The call for presentations ends March 15. They are looking for presentations on:

• Consultation & Public Dialogue;
• Public Policy and Legal Challenges to accessing government data;
• Technologies to Enable Access.

The Library of Canada sent out a message on a listserv concerning its closure of the Canadian Book Exchange Centre, with the following statement as their introduction:

The Government of Canada has introduced a new expenditure management system as part of an ongoing commitment to sound management of government spending. The new system is focused on managing results and on the ongoing assessment of all direct program spending, or strategic review, to ensure efficiency, effectiveness and value for money.

Library and Archives Canada’s (LAC) strategic review concluded that the Canadian Book Exchange Centre (CBEC) program was not appropriately aligned with the priorities of Canadians and with core federal responsibilities.

I suppose the Government of Canada could have asked whether the CBEC was aligned with the priorities of the Canadians working at the Woodland Cultural Centre on Six Nations land in Brantford, who have no library acquisitions budget and thus rely on the CBEC to receive things like government publications pertaining to First Nations. (story)

For those who don’t know, CBEC:

helps Canadian libraries help each other. A resource-sharing service provided by Library and Archives Canada, CBEC is a redistribution centre, a clearing house that arranges for the exchange of publications deemed surplus by one library but needed by another. The Centre ensures that the nation’s collective surplus holdings are accessible to all, keeps material in circulation and provides an efficient, practical method of using libraries’ excess materials to help fill each other’s collection requirements.

My draft post on why librarians should boycott DRM may already be outdated.

This tip on subverting the DRM posse is thanks to Scott Douglas at Speak Quietly and Dispatches from a Public Librarian (McSweeneys), which should be checked out, if only for this entry on one librarian’s journey to a library conference, and back.

Release your fear of being enslaved to your digital music players. A Norwegian chap once famous for decrypting DVDs has created free software to decrypt the DRM from your music files. Still using FB? (speaking as one who is weening myself off) DoubleTwist has a FB app that enables you to share audio and video from your desktop with your friends … given that FB does not permit the posting of copyrighted images to decorate user created groups, etc. I wonder how they will respond to this app.

As I have not tried it out I make no endorsements. Reportedly the quality is the same as burning a CD. I will say that as an mp3 player owner, iTunes should be thanking the Norwegian bloke (AKA “DVD Jon“) who threw this one together. But they’ll probably sue. Myself, I’ll be more likely to pay for iTunes or other music if I know I can have more control over what I do with it and not be tied to a device.

I love Scandinavia.

-PC-

Google will soon be releasing their own take on a Wikipedia-style of information resource - Google Knols (screenshot).

Some of the significant differences will be: named authors (who can choose to receive a portion of ad revenue for the “knol” pages they write) instead of Wikipedia’s anonymous author model. The site will allow multiple “knols” on a single topic (each will be written by a single author) with the community voting for the best one and suggesting changes in a separate area instead of the collaborative style of composing articles used on Wikipedia.

(via MetaFilter)

On a completely unrelated note, this will be the last Friday Fun Link I post on LibrarianActivist. After some recent discussions with the other two librarians I took on this project with about the future of the site, it was felt that we need to re-focus on the serious side of activism. We also discussed some other potential changes and improvements to the site. Hopefully more details about these items will be forthcoming in the weeks and months to come.

I am happy to remain involved with LA as a contributor but for anyone who’s enjoyed this recurring feature, I will continue to post the Friday Fun Links on my personal blog.

- JH

Wikipedia allows anonymous edits but it does track the IP of anyone who makes the edit. So a Cal-Tech computer grad student, inspired by news last year that Congress members’ offices had been editing their own entries, and curious whether other organizations were doing anything similar, developed a program to make it much easier to see the affiliation of anyone who made edits to any Wikipedia page.

This has led to numerous revelations about corporations like Fox News, organizations like the CIA and individuals such as staffers for a current US Presidential candidate abusing the intent of Wikipedia

(via MetaFilter which has lots of other links I didn’t include in this post)

- JH

I’m seeing conflicting reports about the latest developments in the attempt to impose royalty payments on Internet radio stations. No less a mainstream media authority than the Washington Post makes it seem like the advocacy efforts failed and the new fee structure is a done deal:

“The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to stop an increase in royalty and broadcasting fees, jeopardizing the future of some stations. As a result of the decision, handed down Wednesday, fee increases will take effect in two days.”

But then, a well-known but still relatively unknown blog like TinyMixTapes posts this:

“Despite many setbacks in the past months, as well as this week’s court denial of a “motion to stay” petition by webcasters, internet radio has been saved from the freakish royalty rate increases originally due to take effect this Sunday. “A commitment has been made to negotiate reasonable royalties, recognizing the industry’s long-term value and its still-developing revenue potential,” wrote SaveNetRadio on its website.”

SaveNetRadio, the coalition representing various online radio stations seems to confirm the second report:

“Congress and SoundExchange have heard loud and clear the amazing outpouring of support for Internet radio from webcasters, listeners and the thousands of artists they support. A commitment has been made to negotiate reasonable royalties, recognizing the industry’s long-term value and its still-developing revenue potential.

During negotiations SoundExchange committed temporarily not to enforce the new royalty rates so webcasters can stay online as new rates are agreed upon.

This development is due in great part to the millions of people who have let their Congressional representatives know about their support of Internet radio. Over 125 representatives have cosponsored the bill to this point. “

So it sounds like good news at this point but we’re not out of the woods either. Keep watching the blogs and sites I linked to above (especially the SaveNetRadio site) for further developments.

- JH

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 a closed stack system far, far away from the scant selection of windows.

Since 2005 however, quietly in a room in the library at St. Michael’s college, UofT’s partnership with the Open Content Alliance has been digitizing public domain works (books and more) for the Internet Archive. Blackfly magazine published an article (which inspired the heading for this post) in which Carole Moore, head librarian at the St. George campus spoke to UofT’s foray into digitizing public domain works in its collection to make them more accessible and the library more democratic. Articles also appeared at the outset of the project in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

Owen Jarus at Blackfly spoke to how digitization can democratize and transform information through improved access, where WP and WSJ spoke to the business angle, mainly comparing the OCA’s initiative to the Google Books/copyright lawsuit situation. The subtext of course is ‘will we still need libraries’ if all the materials are online?

This week, I finished an intensive course on “Rethinking the Library” taught by guest instructor, Dr. Joseph Janes of the University of Washington’s iSchool. It gave a handful of lucky students the opportunity to have a forum to dialogue on where ‘the library’ is/can/should/isn’t going, and engage with the tough question of what was well coined by the University of Toronto Mississauga’s chief librarian, Mary Ann Mavrinac, as defining our ‘core’. While this question is an ongoing subtext to librarianship, having a sit down in a course environment was a great move. So kudos to the Faculty of Information studies at UofT for offering a full course on this important subject.

The content for me is still percolating … more discussion on this later. In the meantime, if you have burning thoughts on the matter, please chime in!

-PC-

Here’s a quick redirect to a Library Juice post with a couple of nice resources.

First is this guide for collecting from diverse sources (or: outsourcing, how not to).
Fostering Media Diversity in Libraries: Strategies and Actions.

Second there’s a link to a note on the ALA’s opposition to media concentration in the US since June 2003.

Relevant Canadian stuff from libraryland (found by searching the CLA website) is largely falling under the information literacy umbrella:

School Libraries in Canada link.
Information Literacy in Canada blog post.

-PC-

Kudos to the Canadian Library Association and its Open Access Task Force for adopting an Open Access policy for CLA publications.

Here are main recommendatins of the report:

CLA will provide for full and immediate open access for all CLA publications, with the exception of Feliciter and monographs The embargo period for Feliciter is one issue, and the embargo policy itself will be reviewed after one year. Monographs will be considered for open access publishing on a case-by-case basis.

CLA actively encourages its members to self-archive in institutional and/or disciplinary repositories and will investigate a partnership with E-LIS, the Open Archive for Library and Information Studies.

CLA will generally provide for the author’s retention of copyright by employing Creative Commons licensing or publisher-author agreements that promote open access.

CLA will continue its long-standing policy of accessibility to virtually all CLA information except for narrowly defined confidential matters (e.g. certain personnel or legal matters).

For the full report click here.

via the CLA digest

-PC-

There’s been a lot of discussion lately in Toronto about the ROM, and not just about the opening of the controversial Libeskind designed crystal explosion on the north side (which after watching it grow and evolve through its baby to childhood to adolescent and finally adult crystal form, I am now a fan.)

The other hubbub concerns giving the public a way in while the museum bursts out of its walls. From the demise of free Fridays, and then the increase of $5 Fridays to $10 Fridays, admission prices have become less affordable. $20 for adults, $17 for students and seniors, $14(!) for children 5-14 yrs. As a student living downtown Toronto, I can assure you that I’ll be going in for the ‘free 90 minutes before closing’ deal (expanded from 60 minutes to bump up their allotment of free minutes). Like libraries, museums are civic spaces meant to inform, educate, democratize and inspire the public. So what gives?

Leah Sandals over at Spacing Wire writes in a few great pieces on both the blog and the Sunday star that discusses the museum environment, the successful plans in other cities that give free access to culture institutions, and Toronto’s plan to give away free passes through 24 selected library branches through the Toronto Public Library.

TPL posted a link to the “Museum and Arts Passes” program today after officially announcing the program this morning. Twenty-four Toronto Public Library branches that fall in what the city refers to as 13 priority areas are slated to provide the passes. (It would seem that downtowners really are expected to slip in just before closing as the branches are in the burbs.) It would of course be ideal if the passes were available across the board. Or better yet, if there was a free admissions situation like the successful UK museums policy. However, it’s a good move to take a chunk out of cultural elitism by finding an audience and increasing traffic through the public library.

The collaboration also includes the Art Gallery of Ontario, Bata Shoe Museum, Gardiner Museum, Royal Ontario Museum and Textile Museum of Canada. (And a corporate sponsor which I won’t mention here).

The Harper government cut significant funding to museums in the fall, but there’s not much in the media about the issue beyond a few paltry articles (see previous post) like this one that discusses how the recent influx of private funds have put cultural institutions in a tight spot in relationship to our current government. The Canadian Museums Association notes that despite targeted spending on specific projects by the feds, the MAPs cuts still need some advocacy work. No doubt this unstable funding environment makes our public institutions more susceptible to seeking sponsorship deals, and gives an entryway into our public institutions for a corporate mentality.

-PC-

Just when it seems that international intellectual property agreements are making the world a narrower place than ever to live in, some good people come along and remind governments of why the information commons might be worth protecting, after all!

A meeting of WIPO people took place June 18-20, 2007 and while participants were supposed to finalize a basic proposal for a Broadcasting Treaty, they didn’t get very far. According to James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI):

Technically, the subject of the Broadcasting Treaty will continue to be on the agenda of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, but with a fairly tough hurdle before it can move to a diplomatic conference — after there is agreement on the objectives, scope and object of protection, topics for which there is no agreement in sight.

Please read the short news stories below — they provide some much-needed coverage to a media issue that had little coverage prior to the collapse of the negotiations last week.

Many, many thanks are due to Manon Ress, James Love, Thiru Balasubramaniam, and other activists at Knowledge Ecology International and in the A2K movement.

-SIO

**********

Piracy collapses broadcasting treaty
By Frances Williams in Geneva
Published: June 24 2007 17:21 | Last updated: June 24 2007 17:21

…developing countries in Latin America and Asia, led by Brazil and India, have opposed the push by European and African governments for broad new rights that would protect television programmes from unauthorised retransmission for up to 50 years.

Critics say the proposed new rights would overlay existing copyrights, restrict access to programme content that is now in the public domain, prevent legitimate private copying for personal use, and stifle technological innovation.

U.N. broadcasting treaty talks suffer setback
Mon Jun 25, 2007 10:09AM EDT

Efforts to clinch a long-sought international broadcasting treaty have suffered a setback from lingering disagreements over signal piracy and the Internet, a top U.N. official said on Monday.

WIPO Broadcasting Treaty Dead…For Now
Michael Hedges - June 25, 2007

“Several country delegations began to ask deeper questions about the rationale for the treaty, and examined ways to limiting the scope and nature of the treaty,” said James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International, reviewing Friday’s wimpy finale. “In the end, the
broadcasters demanded too much, and made too few concessions, for the treaty to move forward. Delegates at WIPO were no longer willing to ignore issues of access to knowledge, or the control of anticompetitive practices.”

Talks on global broadcast treaty fail
By FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jun 22, 8:27 AM ET

The treaty fell victim to disagreements over issues such as whether protection against piracy should cover only traditional broadcasting methods — meaning cable, antenna and satellite signals — or whether it should include retransmission over the Internet, he said.

European countries wanted to give broadcasters rights over any content they transmit — even if they did not originally produce the content. That type of rights-based treaty is opposed by electronics and telecommunication companies like Intel Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., as well as librarian groups and consumer advocates. They say it would stifle technological innovation and could prevent people from playing legal music or films over their home networks.
…
The biggest loser in this episode is WIPO. Failure to bring the Broadcasting Treaty to a Diplomatic Conference reflects badly on SCCR members and very badly on WIPO General Secretary Kamil Idris. Several developed nations, the United States included, find their constituents better served within the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) treaty. Traditional media will continue to chase “free-riders” but international treaties have broad stakeholders evermore diligent in defending common sense content and distribution rights.

Yay!

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 Agenda meetings in Geneva.

Fortunately, Michael Geist reports a positive update today on his blog.

Update: Reports this morning indicate progress with inclusion of the access to knowledge language. A welcome development, though Canada should be leading on these issues, not aligning itself against the developing world.

Apparently the Harper government needs a wake up call. If the Access to Knowledge issue is new to you, have a look at the Wikipedia community’s summary of A2K/Access to Knowledge. It also includes a long list of organizations active in the A2K movement.

The CIPO mission statement is also worth a look. I’m not seeing anything about Canada’s role internationally.

Keep up to date on IP news through IP Watch and Sarah Bannerman

via the CLA discussion list a la Heather Morrison

-PC-

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 part of a profession that shares information amongst each other, just because we want to? It will never cease to warm my heart. Second, our commitment to information sharing means that private interests from Gates and vendors alike, with their prepackaged sales pitches and honourary Harvard degrees, can’t measure up to the library community’s capacity to educate and inform the public, critically. It’s what we do.

That said, when terms such as Free and Open Source Software and Community Informatics arrive on the scene, they may not make the best first impression. FOSS and CI at first seem like brash guests at the party. They talk over your head, interrupt and confuse the humble and loyal guests, eat too much finger food and then question your menu choices, all while being nervy enough to recommend a better place for you to get your veggies.

Humph. So much for an invite back. However, if techie terms such as these crash the party again and continue to be so obtuse and unreachable, I urge you to see past their initial lack of manners and see them as the bold and renegade newcomers that they are, and simply need a guiding hand from some of the more experienced kids on the block. (And hey, they’ve got a solid point when it comes to buying more organic and locally grown food.)

If I were to have a standing list of block party invitees to mentor these newcomers into our midst, who would be on it? First, I’d make it a potluck. Second, I’d invite the ppl with whom FOSS and CI are already good friends and regularly exchange recipes.

The usual suspects of course:

Jessamyn West. Pimp your Firefox. Watch a video on installing Ubuntu. Make friends with Wikipedia.

Sarah Houghton-Jan. Too many ideas to mention.

Aaron Schmidt . Great blog title, appreciated the Gmail Greasemonkey tip.

Erica Olson. Another great blog title, probably helped me stay in library school at a moment of weakness. Includes some in your face techie goodness.

The Team at Lifehacker. (Still getting acquainted).

Casey Bisson. From whom there is recommended reading: Open Source Software and Libraries; LTR 43.3

And for a few Canadian based suspects

Richard Akerman - Science Library Pad.

Dean Giustini - Open Medicine.

… this list is a work in progress. Any suggestions?

-PC-

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 DCTA.

CanWest Global Communications Corporation stands to increase its profits should a lawsuit they are waging in the name of ‘freedom of expression’ succeed. While the public health system is strained under the weight of increasing costs that are largely the result of pharmaceutical expenses, CanWest seems to be thinking to themselves … why should Pfizer get all the cash? How can we get a piece of this action?

I say “they” because a corporation such as CanWest Global is not an individual. It is a group of individuals. If you’ve seen The Corporation, you will know the importance of this distinction. Despite this, under the law corporations are viewed as having the same rights as individuals. So does a ‘corporation’ as an individual have a moral responsibility to society? What about the people who run that corporation? This lawsuit is claiming that CanWest Global’s right to freedom of expression is being violated. Does a corporation have this ‘right’? Better yet, do they have the ‘right’ to ‘freely express’ an advertisement on behalf of another multi-million dollor corporation, especially when they stand to profit from airing that ad?

Still reading? Back to direct-to-consumer advertising. The basic skinny is that it is legal in the US and New Zealand, Canada not so much. It gets muddy. Canadians have been exposed to drug ads through the American media, and in Canada ads for over the counter medications are permitted as are ads that don’t recommend a drug for a specific condition. Americans and New Zealanders are exposed to the “feeling X? ask your doctor and buy Y” kind of marketing. According to the Toronto Star, US spending increased 10x over the course of 11 years, from 1994 -2005. Open Medicine, the British Medical Journal, Toronto Star, a recent CBC podcast, the Canadian Pharmacists Association and the CMAJ all have good information describing how direct-to-consumer advertising impacts health spending. No one seems to be a fan.

Direct-to-consumer advertising is not ‘free speech’. Advertising messages are carefully constructed bids to pitch products. They are created by talented, creative and well-compensated advertising teams. Legalizing direct-to-consumer advertising would permit profit-seeking corporations to compete with public health interests and public (as in your tax) dollars. As librarians, we can inform the public that for safe and effective medical and health information, ads are not credible sources given that they are rife with branding strategies and backed by well-funded market research. Even if some ads are deemed ‘legal’ and hit the airwaves, they are in fact not ‘health information’. Unfortunately, the research suggests their impact is still huge.

Your Media notes that it is not safe to assume that it will be easy to prove that CanWest Global does not have a case. So you may be thinking, what can a librarian do in a situation such as this. Let’s consider some options …

First, whether you are a health librarian, academic librarian, public librarian, or special librarian - make your patrons aware of this issue:
a) CanWest Global is attempting to encroach on the public’s rights and they have a right to be informed about it
b) from an media/information literacy standpoint, DCTA exemplifies what NOT to use for informative purposes.

While I’m all for seeking alternative sources to health information, DCTA stinks. Freedom of expression being the wonderful thing that it is, you can exercise yours by talking to your Member of Parliament, sending a dirty note to the CRTC, and ccing whatever you do to the CanWest Global turkeys.

Oy, that was long. Thanks for hanging in there.
-PC-

Siobhan Stevenson, faculty at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies, has published a paper in First Monday entitled “Public libraries, public access computing, FOSS and CI: There are alternatives to private philanthropy“. Great read!

I had the great fortune to read her University of Western Ontario PhD thesis (The post-Fordist public library : from Carnegie to Gates) in which she lays out her critique of Gates and Carnegie-style philanthropy. Great thesis — interlibrary loan that baby if you get a chance. It’s only 125 pages long, too: good and succinct. She also has an article in the Winter 06/07 issue of Progressive Librarian entitled “Philanthropies Unexpected Consequences: public libraries and the struggle over free v. proprietary software”. Do you see the theme in her research?

Here is the abstract from her First Monday paper:

In January 2007, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) announced its second multi–year technology grant program for America’s public libraries. The purpose of Phase II, Keeping communities connected: The next step is to help public libraries sustain the public access computing infrastructure laid down during Phase I. Now, as then, the goal of the program is to bridge the digital divide. But it is a digital divide as defined by Bill Gates and not the public library community. Situating Gates’ philanthropy within a critical policy frame, this paper considers two alternatives to Gates’ problem definition of the digital divide, and how knowledge of these might benefit those communities served by public access computing (PAC) services as found in public libraries. The two specific alternatives considered come from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and Community Informatics (CI). Significantly, both social movements promote the potential of free and open software as an important part of any solution. Finally, the public library literature is reviewed for patterns in the community’s use of FOSS, and the argument is made for its use in the delivery of PAC services.

First Monday is just super.

-SIO

Open Medicine’s first issue of peer reviewed medical literature is available online. Dean Giustini of UBC Library and the Google Scholar Blog has been a key player in bringing this new publication to life, and writes about it on both his blog, and now the Open Medicine blog as well. The journal was created in response to an editorial fiasco at the Canadian Medical Association Journal, with the intention of removing pharmaceutical industry influence over the production and dissemination of medical information.

Open Medicine is such a great title. It speaks to the need for not just open access to information, but also an open dialogue on how medical information is conceived, constructed, communicated, digested and negotiated. And while the open nature of the Internet provides an opportunity to level the playing field for patients, it is merely the first step to patient empowerment (not that anyone at OM has made an argument for technological utopianism). Pearl Jacobson notes in Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, power dynamics between patients and physicians are a key aspect to whether access to information will translate into actual patient empowerment on the ground.

Any open dialogue in the health library field that discusses what it means to ‘open medicine’ would best include a look at the term ‘consumer’. Does a term with free market connotations belong in the discourse of a public system? ‘Consumer’ suggests that patients have free will and ultimate control within the physician-patient encounter, which according to Jacobson’s review is not the case for a myriad of reasons. Recently on the PLG listserv, there was some excellent discussion and commentary on how language that expresses capitalist values and norms are not transferable to the field of librarianship. The term ‘customer’ was used on the CHLA listserv recently, and while I’m not familiar with the context from which it originated, it made me uneasy. Is there room for open dialogue on this subject in health libraries? What are the implications of a discourse that involves ‘consumerizing’ health information?

You can support the volunteer-supported Open Medicine by making a donation.

-PC-

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

(via MetaFilter)

- JH

The fabulous public broadcast station Television Ontario | TVO posts podcasts to, among other great shows, the lecture series Big Ideas. (And they’re available via RSS feed, MP3 file or iTunes).

Dr. Darin Barney, McGill professor of communication studies and Canada Research Chair in Technology and Citizenship, speaks via the UofT Hart House lecture series on (what else but) the relationship between technology and citizenship. He poses an argument for the politicization of technology.

Have a listen to Dr. Barney’s talk, entitled One Nation Under Google .
Read the 2007 Hart House Lecture blog by the same man here.

-PC-

An Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums and watches what happens.

What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. Some of the other things they learned, Mitra says, astonished him.

Strong evidence in favour of the $100 laptop? I think so!

(via Reddit)

- JH

Chip Ward’s illuminating article on how the library has become a de facto ’shelter’ in place of the state’s shrunken safety net was illuminating commentary on how marginalized ppl are often perceived as non-citizens, non-persons, non-existant nuisances in the collective conscience.

This seems like an opportune moment to give some props to some ‘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 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

Here is a rad and inspiring interview with Hugh McGuire, founder and Head Rockstar of Librivox. What a good, good man.

At the end of the show, he talks about where the “Librivox model” can go, and brings up the need to make basic data available to the public for urban planning, environment, health, and political purposes. One group that’s working on making such data available in the public domain is CivicAccess. They’re currently trying to make electoral information freely available to everyone who wants to use it because, at present, the database that links postal codes to electoral information (e.g. based on your postal code, who’s your MP?) is a licensed one. And the license ain’t cheap — it starts at $2900 — fine for marketing companies but not so accessible for citizens’ and not-for-profit groups. CivicAcces want to do the same with the 2006 StatsCan Census information and other civic data. More good people!

-SIO

An article about the shift in the role of public library from “library” to “homeless shelter”. (via MetaFilter which, as always, has lots of good discussion around all aspects of this issue.)

- JH

Some talented and tech savvy lawyers crafted a letter that led to Recording Industry Association of America voluntarily withdrawing a malicious lawsuit .

Here’s a quote:

“Your client take the position that my middle-aged, conservative clients should speculate regarding the identity of persons your clients’ claim used their AOL account to download pornographic-lyric gangsta rap tracks as predicate to possible case resolution. In an age of Wintel-virus created bot-farms, spoofs, and easily cracked WEP encrypted wireless home networks (among other easy hacks), the only tech-savvy response to such a request is, “You’ve got to be kidding.”"

end quote.

-PC | source Recording Industry vs. the People

An editorial in the Toronto Star today regarding lifting secrecy from the medical realm is (to me) a call to arms … especially within a publicly funded health care system.

Here are some of the highlights:

1. 23 000 ppl per year die in Canadian hospitals due to adverse events

2. access to information is dependent on jurisdiction and the POV of hospital administrators, not the Access to Information Act.

3. the dismal surgical record of an Ontario surgeon - not available to the public - led to more than a dozen women suffering physical and emotional harm under his care

Link.

Ontario legislators are debating health accountability legislation this week. How about siding with public safety on this one.

This article is the third in a series in the Star about coming clean about medical errors.

Check the first two out here and here.

-PC

LibriVox is a volunteer project with the goal of making pubilc domain works available as audio books.

There’s a plethora of goodies here for bibliophiles.

Not only is the available of classic works a beautiful thing, but access to audio books is a boon to those who benefit from having access to books through alternative mediums … coming to mind:

If you’ve been meaning to contribute your voice (literally) to an information cause, sign up to volunteer and read a chapter or two …

via Boing, Boing, who cited the recent addition of Darwin’s “On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection” to the collection.

-PC