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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
“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…
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 –…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
