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Canadian Health Scientists Resort To Sneaker Net After Funding Slashed

Posted by Unknown on from the hide-the-books-in-fred's-basement dept.

sandbagger writes "Health Canada scientists are so concerned about losing access to their research library that they're finding workarounds, with one squirreling away journals and books in his basement for colleagues to consult, says a report obtained by CBC News. The report said the number of in-house librarians went from 40 in 2007 to just six in April 2013. 'I look at it as an insidious plan to discourage people from using libraries' said Dr. Rudi Mueller, who left the department in 2012. 'If you want to justify closing a library, you make access difficult and then you say it is hardly used.' This is hardly new for Stephen Harper's Conservative government. Over the Christmas holidays, several scientific libraries were closed and their contents taken to the dump."

3 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not only in the US... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The two major players would be tar sands development and (relatively distant second) fisheries lobbies who would rather fish their quarry into extinction and then go bankrupt, rather than suffer some sort of limits now in the service of having fish in the future.

    The fisheries guys are comparatively small-time (and have been around for decades, and also have a love/hate relationship with scientific fish experts, nobody likes being subject to quotas; but fishermen aren't dumb enough to think that the future of fishing is in having no fish, so they agree in principle, if not in yearly numbers and exact population estimates, with the science guys), so my money would be on the tar sands sector.

  2. Re:Not only in the US... by rmdingler · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Conversely, religion involves indoctrination.

    Consolidated masses are very useful to political parties.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  3. Curtin Uni in Australia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was a student at curtin for a while. Whilst I was there they binned some old chemistry reference books than no one had used in a while.
    They were a near complete set of chemistry journals from the 1750ish through 1910 ish. These were one of maybe 3 sets in the world, we sent to the tip. Gone forever.
    This is why I am keen in the digitization of works copyrighted or otherwise.