Increasing numbers of public libraries are moving towards a self-checkout system, based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. This is not the slow and often painful process you encounter in Ikea or Home Depot, where customers are forced to supply free labour by doing the work of cashiers, while corporations pocket
Continue readingAuthor: laura k
wmtc: three library issues, part 1: the all-digital library
An enormous number of library-related stories cross my path, either through school or this blog. A few have stayed on my mind and seem worth fleshing out. A San Antonio, Texas public library will become the first in the US (and possibly in the world) to go completely bookless – that
Continue readingwmtc: best of wmtc, 2012 edition
The wmtc greatest hits page has been updated with the best posts of 2012, as chosen by my editor and second-biggest* fan. Thanks for reading, and thank you always for your support. * My mother, who else?!
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading, children’s books edition: # 5
In this post, I look at two nonfiction books for young readers. Both are featured in the current “Forest of Reading” program, a province-wide recreational reading program sponsored by the Ontario Library Association. Both fiction and nonfiction winners of the various Forest of Reading awards – Silver Birch, Red Maple,
Continue readingwmtc: 25 years since morgentaler: celebrate and re-commit to action
Twenty-five years ago, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the federal abortion law in the Morgentaler decision, making Canada one of the few countries in the world without criminal restrictions on abortion access. That historic court decision was the result of activism on the part of women and their allies,
Continue readingwmtc: 40 years old and already irrelevant: happy birthday roe v wade
Right now there are no American women who were of reproductive age prior to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Yet reproductive rights in the US have never been more threatened. 2011 marked the passage of the most state-level restrictive abortion laws ever. 2012 saw the
Continue readingwmtc: more books on books
A while back, I wrote some “what i’m reading” posts under the general category “books on books”. Allan has just added to this small collection with a post about The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, a book by Alan Jacobs. If you are a self-reflective reader, and
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading, children’s books edition: # 4
Still Classic? A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle, 1962 A Wrinkle in Time has always been one of my favourite books. Although I have re-read it a few times over the years, I approached it for this series with some trepidation, a bit concerned that I might no longer recommend
Continue readingwmtc: jimmy carter: we are calling on all leaders to challenge misogyny
Jimmy Carter: This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination,
Continue readingwmtc: urgent: help defend ontario’s endangered species!
The Government of Ontario is poised to gut the province’s Endangered Species Act. Right now, according to the David Suzuki Foundation, Ontario’s Endangered Species Act is one of the strongest in Canada. Under the ESA, companies that intend to develop land or extract resources must apply for permits that leave
Continue readingwmtc: things i heard at the library: an occasional series: # 8
At the branch library where I’m currently working as a page, the magazine section is along a back wall forming an L shape – the long part full of magazines, the short part with teen magazines and comic books. This isn’t the graphic novel section; it’s Archie, Amazing Spider-Man, and
Continue readingwmtc: are we seeing the beginning of global people’s revolution?
“There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear…” This week, I attended a talk put on by the International Socialists, featuring an organizer with OUR Walmart, by Skype from Texas, and a Toronto-based union activist. Both speakers were terrific and so inspiring, but although I took copious notes,
Continue readingwmtc: workers doing it for themselves: fighting the austerity agenda in north america
I’m re-running this, which I wrote for Socialist Worker Canada (now at a temporary site while a new website is being completed). If you are part of this struggle – or if you want to be part of it – and live in the GTA, please join us tomorrow night
Continue readingwmtc: why you cannot save your way to a comfortable retirement
I was very pleased to see this run in the New York Times. I guess it was safe because the writer didn’t actually use the word socialism. But this Op-Ed is all about the dead-end of capitalism, choking the life out of the working person, and more recently, the middle
Continue readingwmtc: it’s time we all starved the trolls: stop reading comments on mainstream news stories
Robert Fisk has a good piece in The Independent about the incivility (to put it mildly!) that is endemic in the comment sections of online news stories: “Anonymous trolls are as pathetic as the anonymous “sources” that contaminate the gutless journalism of the New York Times, BBC, and CNN”. Fisk
Continue readingwmtc: help defend whistleblowers who defend animals: marineland suing former employees who went public on animal abuse
Company abuses animals/the environment/labour. Employee comes forward to make the abuse public. Company tries to silence employee. It’s an old story, and it repeats itself again and again, in many different contexts. You’ve seen it dramatized in movies like Silkwood and Erin Brockovich. It’s what Bradley Manning is going through
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading, children’s book edition: # 3: a war resister story of sorts
In this children’s book review, I look at a book about military war resistance and analyze its lessons and conclusions. Shot at Dawn deals with many unpleasant realities of war – including some shameful episodes in Canada’s past – with open eyes and without sugar coating. Ultimately, the author pulls
Continue readingwmtc: dr. dawg on the extraordinary acts of ordinary people, and the pundits who cannot abide them
Dr. Dawg has written a terrific piece about the mainstream media’s disturbing, if predictable, response to the courageous actions of Chief Theresa Spence. Extraordinary things, we are being instructed, may only be done by extraordinary people. Spence is frumpy, not particularly witty or intellectual, somewhat inconsistent as things change around
Continue readingwmtc: what i’m reading: chango’s beads and two-tone shoes (and maybe more, again) by william kennedy
I am reading Changó’s Beads and Two-tone Shoes, the latest novel by William Kennedy, one of my very favourite authors, and in my opinion, one of the greatest English-language writers of our time. Changó’s Beads is Kennedy’s first novel in several years, and after not reading him for so long, his
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