#libricide

At first, the closing of the library at the Lethbridge Agricultural Centre looked methodical. Staff were informed of the closure in July. Then in early August they were told they could help themselves to items from the collection.

And then it all went south from there: in mid-August summer students began filling an extra-large dumpster with journals and reports. Reportedly, one scientist jumped into the dumpster to rescue a set of journals. Distressed staff began to select more and more books from the collection in order to rescue them.

The dumped books turned into news, bringing more embarrassment upon the federal government. The latter has attracted international negative attention for closing down research stations, and muzzling scientists.

The Harper government has shut down 16 research libraries during its time in government. While the closures have attracted media attention and news stories, in an exclusive National Observer is detailing exactly what happens when the government shuts down a science library.

An anonymous source has stepped forward and provided National Observer with a detailed report on how the library closure took place.

National Observer very rarely uses anonymous sources, but the fear of reprisal from the federal government for speaking out has silenced the scientific community. In some stories leading up to this one, the National Observer contacted researchers, scientists and librarians, all of whom refused comment or didn’t return calls.

National Observer also contacted Agriculture Canada for this story and others related to it. The government has not responded to requests for comment on this story.

So...I've taken on a gig as a professional petition writer for this site. I won't inundate my already-inundated Tumblr with links to things I've written constantly (because to make money I will be writing a lot).

This, however, is something that I haven't stopped thinking about for the past two days and it continues to make me sick. So I am promoting it in hopes some people may sign and share.

If you didn't see my link Tuesday, the Canadian government has gutted nine world-class environmental libraries across the country and has likely thrown priceless and irreplaceable environmental records into the garbage. While the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has claimed any records thrown away were duplicates or have been digitized. They have failed to produce sufficient proof, and scientists and media outlets have reported seeing dumpsters full of the volumes that once made up these libraries. The Harper government has an established precedent of obfuscation and putting the interests of corporations (often oil companies) in front of those of its people and its environment. 

This offends me as an environmentalist, as an adherent to science, as a person who believes in governmental transparency, and as someone who loves libraries and is committed to the free exchange of information. 

Jeff Hutchings, Acclaimed Dalhousie University biologist

"Not only has the Canadian public lost critical environmental and cultural baseline data more than 100 years old, but scientists have lost the symbolic heart of their research operations....

One scientist after another struggled to make sense of the shuttering of libraries devoted to water and fish in a nation that guards the world's largest coastline and roughly 18 per cent of the world's surface freshwater. Most saw in the actions a political agenda by the Harper government to reduce the role of government in Canadian society, as well as the use of scientific evidence in making policy....

The Freshwater Institute library held collections dating back 100 years, on the quality and state of freshwater systems in central Canada, the Great Lakes and the Arctic."

Irreplaceable documents like the 50 volumes produced by the H.M.S. Challenger expedition of the late 1800s that discovered thousands of new sea creatures, are now moldering in landfills.

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