A sweeping move by the Canadian government to shrink the number of its departmental research libraries is drawing fire from some in academe who fear a loss of data and trained personnel, and damage to the country’s ability to carry out research.
The closure of seven regional libraries in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and the quiet elimination of more than two dozen libraries in other departments, might otherwise have passed largely unnoticed, given the modest cost savings.
According to government documents, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans estimates that the consolidation will save 443,000 Canadian dollars, or about $405,000, in 2014-15.
But government scientists, university researchers, and librarians say the manner of the downsizing, which they charge was conducted with little consultation, contradicts government reassurances that taxpayer-funded reports and research documents would be preserved and digitized for online access.
“We have no real assurances, other than them telling us so, that things have not been lost,” said John Dupuis, head of the Steacie Science and Technology Library at York University, in Toronto. “It does not look like they are doing as much as they could have to make sure things were not lost.”
Much of the furor has centered on the fisheries department, which is consolidating its libraries into two locations, in Sidney, British Columbia, and Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. A public firestorm erupted after the Canadian news media published photographs of discarded material in trash bins and cited uncorroborated allegations of books’ being burned.
“Here we have people with Ph.D.'s in oceanic scientific research who are highly educated and skilled and specialized, and nobody asked them if the materials in the library were required for them to continue their research,” said Debi Daviau, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, whose members include government scientists.
Adamantly denying any book burning, Gail Shea, Canadian minister of fisheries and oceans, said in a written statement that “our government values these collections and will continue to strongly support it by continuing to add new material on an ongoing basis.” She added, “All materials for which DFO has copyright will be preserved by the department.”
Despite government assurances, some academic researchers and librarians remain skeptical.
“My overwhelming feeling is that we don’t know exactly what some of the ramifications are for my future research or other people’s research because of the nonsystematic way it has been done,” said John Reynolds, a professor of aquatic ecology at Simon Fraser University who uses federal-government fisheries data on British Columbia streams for his study of salmon sustainability.
He questioned why the government had failed to publish an inventory of library materials before and after the downsizing, including documents not covered by copyright.
Doubts About Digitization
Librarians said one of the biggest unknowns was how digitized content would be made available to the public.
“There’s disquiet and real skepticism that the plan for digitization, which is what they are promoting as the great hope for accessibility, will in fact take place in a timely and effective manner,” said Marie DeYoung, president of the Canadian Library Association and university librarian at Saint Mary’s University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
All libraries “weed” collections to remove material that is no longer relevant, she said, usually applying a “best practices” model of consultation, transparency, and accountability.
“Things go off the shelf for very good reasons, and those are reasons that everyone understands within the library or information community and are always available to anyone who questions why something has been removed,” she said. “It’s a transparent process, and it’s a process that we in this profession feel accountable for.”
With the government’s library culling, she said, “there’s no indication that this took place.” She added, “It may have, but we have not been able to identify that it did.”
Moreover, said librarians, digitization is no panacea. “There’s a lot more going on under the hood than just chucking it through the scanner,” said Erin Patterson, a librarian at Acadia University, in Nova Scotia, and chair of the Librarians and Archivists Committee of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.
“You need to have metadata attached to the item so it’s searchable, findable,” she said. “You need to have databases to store those individual items, you need to have user interfaces so people can retrieve them, you need search algorithms so they can be found, you need software so people can display them once you retrieve them, and all these steps involve technology that’s changing constantly.”
Several university libraries said they had been approached by the fisheries department to take some of the material before it was offered to the public. One of them was Saint Mary’s University, but it opted not to take any because the documents duplicated what was already in its own library, said Ms. DeYoung.
However, the University of Manitoba, the largest academic library in the province, took 200 books and a dozen journals from the now-closed Eric Marshall Aquatic Research Library, located on the campus’s edge.
The transfer of materials last year was “a perfectly professional, orderly process,” said Karen Adams, the university librarian at Manitoba. “There is no evidence in my mind that valuable material was lost from here, but I do think valuable supports for the research community were lost from here,” she said, citing the loss of government research librarians.
A Larger Pattern?
Already, regular users of the federal fisheries-library collection have reported problems finding what they want on the database. “I’ve tried to find a document that I know is in the DFO library, and I can’t find it,” said Jeffrey A. Hutchings, a professor of biology at Dalhousie University, in Halifax. Like others, he worries about the fate of material not protected by federal-government copyright. “I was thinking about what I use from their library, and they don’t hold copyright on most of it.”
Some in Canadian academe said the closure of the libraries fitted into a larger pattern of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government to adopt policies that undermine scientific work and restrict government researchers from talking publicly about their findings.
“The ability of academics, policy advisers, and the public to get information—whether it be surveys of Canadians, records from other governments, publications in Canada—is systematically under assault by this government,” said James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.
But Peter W.B. Phillips, a professor of public policy and science at the University of Saskatchewan, is more sanguine. “We have a deficit at the federal level, and they are looking at where they can find savings,” he said. “Science is not immune.”
