Guns, knives & other prohibited items: What happens when good 3D printers go bad?
When the St. Thomas Public Library started investigating 3D printers as a new service several years ago, one of the frequent responses I would…
Net neutrality: Is the end in sight?
On December 14, 2017, the U.S. telecommunications regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), voted to repeal the country’s net neutrality regulations. What are the…
Campaign literature: Political evidence we must collect
A political paper trail of sorts will start this spring. Candidates hoping to win a seat in the Ontario legislature will hit the campaign…
Canada 151: Visions of Indigenous & non-Indigenous relations through time
Canada 150 is now officially over. However, the reconciliation work of libraries, archives, museums and other memory institutions continues in Canada 151. The Truth…
Safe spaces: Library values in the cultural wars
Headlines today scream about highly charged debates in the sociological and cultural sphere: Whose voices need to be heard? How do we create equity?…
Games: Community building blocks
I may have told you this story before but, even at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will tell it again.…
Decolonization
Decolonization is a powerful and contentious word. What does it mean exactly? Is it feasible? Is it desirable? And what does it mean for…
From pilot to perfect: Improving RA skills by investing in training
Practice makes perfect—or at least staff can benefit from targeted readers’ advisory training, particularly when they have time to practice and reflect on their…
Canada 150: Library work as a profession for women
B. Mabel Dunham (1881-1957) was the president of the Ontario Library Association in 1920. In her presidential address, she spoke bluntly about the opportunities…
Hidden figures: Book or movie?
We love to compare books and their screen adaptations ... plot and people, pace and perspective. Which version is better, the movie or the…
IFLA/UNESCO manifesto & toolkit: Creating multicultural libraries
As the out-going chair of the IFLA Library Services for Multicultural Populations Section, I shared this manifesto with participants at the IFLA 2017 conference, held…
Makerspaces: Take two
Complete surprise and appreciation: this was my first reaction to reading a response to an article I had written for Open Shelf last spring.…
Welcoming LGBTQ+ people
How can we demonstrate, through action, that LGBTQ+ people are welcome in libraries? In the first article in this limited series of conversations, Amanda…