An Invite from the St. Catharines and District Council of Women
Dr. Jennifer Hubbard, associate professor of the history of science and technology , Ryerson University is the featured speaker at a public meeting on Thursday October 8th at 8 p.m. at the St. Catharines Centennial Library in the city’s downtown.
A shocking number of Canada’s federal libraries have been closed over the past few years and key scientific information has been discarded. Scientists have raised alarm bells as they, and others needing key scientific data – and very crucially, the political policy makers- have less and less key data to inform their work and in the case of the government , their decisions.
Dr. Hubbard, a leading–edge pioneer in the emerging field of maritime science, and author of “A Science on the Scales: The Rise of Canadian Atlantic Fisheries Biology” and co-author of “A Century of Maritime Science”, is passionate about the destruction of our scientific knowledge base.
She warns us that “The closure of science libraries and the destruction of scientific documents marks a blatant disregard for the scientists who work for us and for the public alike. Whether the motivation for it be cost-cutting or a skewed notion of progress, it is a mark of a new age of barbarism .”
And the public will be looking for answers to these and other questions re the government’s motivation for this scientific document destruction and the potential end results, such as :
*Whose information is it anyway?
* How many federal “public’ libraries have been closed and is this a “war on knowledge”?
* What does this mean to the quality of information needed to make good government and other decisions ?
Learn more about the St. Catharines and District Council of Women by clicking on – http://jura123.com/pcwo-stcatharines/showpage.asp?id=1 .
Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary for and from the greater bi-national Niagara region.
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Harper wants to destroy the truth… he will then hire ad writers to promote how well Canada is doing in promoting the sciences.
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As former Professional Librarian, watching the current government having destroyed books (Marine Science in particular) stifle Lib. and Archives Canada (LAC) employees from speaking out (Freedom of speech, anyone?) and appointing a head librarian (Roche, I believe his name was, before quietly asked to leave and be replaced,—- having spent our taxpayers dime on private Spanish lessons, yes he di) but worse, stopping interlibrary loans (ILLO) of newspaper and archives microfilm (hobbling all academic researchers, family historians and more) from access to carefully preserved material, this still outrages me. And others. But we are spitting in the wind, Bill and Doug, and other readers, if we hope much will change.
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Thank you so much for this article, I’ve been requesting this topic for 2 years. Hope you can make it out. Jane
Jane Hanlon, Executive Director
GREENING NIAGARA (formerly Climate Action Niagara)
http://www.greeningniagara.ca
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