This is the story of my journey as a librarian from Iran who wanted to work in Canada with a degree not accredited by the American Library Association (ALA). In Iran, I spent four years working toward my Bachelor of Library and Information Science degree and two and a...
BCLA Perspectives
Issue 2
‘Libraries aren’t book-filled caves’: an interview with author and activist Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-born journalist and science fiction writer who co-edits the blog Boing Boing and writes on topics ranging from tech culture to copyright law. His extensive body of work includes titles like Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the...
Democracy in your earbuds: the freedom of podcasting
Ever since meeting in library school, we have often had long and in-depth discussions about our personal and professional interests, from comics and video games to cataloguing and digitization techniques. It was during one such conversation over beers in a pub one...
Perspectives on the Centre for Equitable Library Access at Vancouver Public Library
The Centre for Equitable Library Access is a national, not-for-profit organization run by public libraries, for public libraries, to provide materials for people with print disabilities. People with print disabilities cannot use regular print and require alternate...
Increasing access: Surrey Libraries’ new strategies for reducing barriers to library use
In 2012, the City of Surrey, along with a number of community agencies, released a Poverty Reduction Plan which found that one in five Surrey residents was currently living in poverty. At the time, this amounted to around 71,000 members of the city. Surrey Libraries’...
Simon Fraser University librarians on the changing role of library information service
Academic libraries in Canada have seen the roles of their information staff change at the professional and para-professional level in the last 20 years. This is also the case at Simon Fraser University (SFU) Library. To get a better sense of how this large academic...
Diverse Books Reading Smackdown challenges VPL staff to read outside the box
Troubled by the homogeneity of the publishing world and inspired by the We Need Diverse Books movement, staff at Vancouver Public Library (VPL) wanted to draw attention to the importance of reading, buying, and promoting diverse books. We decided to start...
BCLA Readers Advisory Interest Group: Titles to talk about
BCLA Readers Advisory Interest Group has three titles to recommend to patrons who ask the dreaded question, “What do you have that’s good?” The poignancy of Paul Kalanithi’s memoir When Breath Becomes Air is deeply affecting. At age 36, nearly at the end of training...