Canada "Consolidating" And Culling 100 Years+ Of Information As 7 Fishery Libraries Close Nationwide
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Seven DFO libraries across Canada are to close by the fall, including two that have been amassing books and technical reports on the aquatic realm for more than a century. The department said “all” the materials will remain available either online or through inter-library loans.
But critics said digital and remote access is no replacement for the real thing. They also fear valuable historical information will be lost in the purge, or “weeding,” now underway as the seven libraries are dismantled. “It is information destruction unworthy of a democracy,” said Peter Wells, an ocean pollution expert at Dalhousie University in Halifax, who describes the closing of the libraries as a “national tragedy.”
Eric Mills, a specialist in the history of marine sciences at Dalhousie University, sees it as a “disaster” that will stifle research. While Jennifer Hubbard, a science historian at Ryerson University in Toronto, said it could make fisheries’ science “a lot less effective.”
They also noted that one of the libraries being closed opened just last year – a climate-controlled facility at the St. Andrews Biological Station in New Brunswick built at a cost of several million federal tax dollars. “They’ve invested all this money in a beautiful new library and now they want to close it down,” said Hubbard. “It just doesn’t make any economic sense.”
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http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/environment/Closure+fisheries+libraries+called+disaster/8241123/story.html
