Article in the Tyee
Dismantling of Fishery Library '
Like a Book Burning,' Say Scientists
But this problem is much farther reaching than just Fisheries libraries.
Reminds me of the Provincial liberals shutting down the
Provincial mental health library at Riverview in 2010
Nobody was screaming then, and it appears that nobody is screaming now, not that long ago in Europe a similar story was playing out, but in a more ruthless way. The
Nazi book burnings
Just a simple search of the DFO libraries,
WAVES catalogue, shows up its shortcomings; some books are under copyright, but many that should, and could be digitized are not, it has been a HUGE shortcoming in the library for many years. Another frequent issue with digital copies is the quality of them is frequently just terrible. Digitization of the textural portions is okay, but any pictures, maps, etc, can, and frequently are missing the fine details, which are so important. As the catalogue database is called in French "Vagues" also appears to be an apt term to use in English.
Another vast catalogue is
Geoscan, which is everything geological, mapping,, It has been interesting to follow their long path at digitizing; have a peek at the most recent uploads
HERE, rather obvious by following the recent uploads that the focus is on the search for hydrocarbons, and secondarily the relentless search for economic minerals in the far north.
It will be interesting to see if they attempt to destroy the National Research Council,
(NRC) library
Since that is an eclectic mix of many disciplines, some that would be contrary to the present federal unspoken mandates.
A resource that I frequently use is the BC Environment Ministries;
Cross-Linked Information Resources, (CLIR) catalogue; often wondered why they need a catalogue for themselves and one for the public though, what do they have to hide? Many files can be found digitized here, that the DFO lists, but has not digitized themselves. As usual the quality is variable, usually favoring poor.
As usual it takes a volunteer organization to get the job done correctly, the
Internet Archive, has many copies of mostly older materials, and some of them are not the best quality. But if you know how to use it, the Internet Archive, just shines ☼ I will give an example below:
Re-settlement and cultivation of land in British Columbia [microform] : an address delivered before St. John's Literary Society, Vancouver, British Columbia, January 12th, 1915 (1915)
Click on the
HTTPS link,circled in RED in this example, which will take you to this page:
The file with the ending of
jp2.zip is actually a page by page photo file, which has been zipped; and is a copy of what was donated to the Internet Archive, by the donor. Download these files, unzip them, and you will have a folder with each page of the text as an image. These
jp2 photos, can really show up how terrible PDF files are at degrading the originals.
I use
Irfanview (FREE) to read them, it can convert them to other formats as needed. And a WARNING, these images can be quite large, but they are definitely much more readable, and hence useful.
Wake up Sheeple !
