Open data is happening on one side of government while access to data and information is getting either reduced or locked down in other parts. This story about muzzling archivists was released some weeks ago.
An anecdote. Yesterday I went to see the movie NO, about the marketing campaign for the NO side of the plebiscite against the Chilean Pinochet dictatorship. The movie was terrible, the sentiment excellent, and the timing with the ongoing trials, probably no accident. As my son and my visiting friend were lamenting the quality of the film, I explained the politics of it to them, but also, why it is so important to have an impartial and protected national archive that allows for access to all the footage, news clips and story boards that were shown in the film. I explained what was going on with our archive, and, they got the picture. They began to rethink how they understood the role of the archive.
Will our archives, librarians and archivists be able to answer the following questions in the future?
- How will we know about the Keystone pipeline decisions?
- Will we ever get to the bottom of the Census story? (CensusWatch)
- How did the experimental lakes project get defunded?
- Which women’s groups lost their funding under this government?
- Why are government libraries and CISTI closing or being made ineffective?
- How come social policy think tanks like Canadian Policy Research Network are being shut down?
- Who created the policy which said the gun registry shall not be archived?(post)
- Why did the High Arctic Research Station get shut down?
- What was the strategy behind the muzzling of Canadian Scientists? See Science UnCensored.
- Why on earth would anyone silence a librarian or an archivist?
I mean honestly? What first world democratic country does that?
Below are links to material that librarians and archivists sent my way in confidence.
This presentation contains the Code of Conduct statements Library and Archives (LAC) Archivists must now follow.
- Calgary Herald: ABCs of ‘behaviour regulation’ for federal librarians and archivists
- CBC Podcast: of the Library Code of Conduct on As It Happens
- BoingBoing blog post: Canadian government muzzles librarians and archivists, creates snitch line to report those who speak online or in public without permission
- British Columbia Library Association Response.
- Save Library and Archives Campaign
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