Greatest Canadian Woman?

Ok, so while the show, the Greatest Canadian, was entertaining and educational, I, as well as many others, inlcuding some of the advocates, could not help but notice that not a single woman made it to the top ten.
I have my own thoughts on why this is such as many women made great progress for women causes, but some see that progress as a woman's issue, not a national issue. I mean, they did good for women, not for the country (from some people's perspective). This is just a huge assumption I've made. And it's only one possible reason that a woman did not make the top ten.

Let's take a look at the women who did make the top one hundred:

#18 Shania Twain
#25 Nellie McClung (I nominated her too - and David Suzuki)
#27 Celine Dion
#35 Laura Secord
#40 Avril Lavigne
#44 Mary Maxwell
#51 Pamela Anderson
#57 Lucy Maud Montgomery
#63 Roberta Bondar
#66 Sheila Fraser
#71 Margaret Atwood
#72 Senator Anne Cools
#74 Emily Murphy
#75 Sarah McLachlan
#81 Sandra Schmirler
#85 Emily Carr
#93 Joni Mitchell
#94 Anne Murray
#97 Louise Arbour

This means that women make up about 19% of the top one hundred. I think the whole thing is a bit of a popularity contest overall - the debates over the top 10 helped change that. But really, Pamela higher than Roberta Bondar and Lucy Maud? Well, that's my opinion. I'll let you draw your own about the rest of the nominees for top 100.

CBC.ca - The Greatest Canadian

CBC.ca - The Greatest Canadian

Yes, I watched this show the last 2 nights, actually 3 nights since Saturday they were re-playing the documentaries on Newsworld.
I voted - once for Banting and once for Pearson. Before this I hadn't heard of Tommy Douglas. The debates on Sunday night we're really interesting; people can get really defensive about their choice for the Greatest Canadian.
Despite enjoying the show and learning from it, I'm still not certain I believe in the concept of "the greatest Canadian", especially when voted on by only 1.2 million, and that number probably includes the multiple votes.
Nevertheless, I probably will by the video collection!

Bloglines | My Blogs

Bloglines | My Blogs

I found it amusing, and perhaps significant, that my unread LIS feeds today was "666".

I've barely been reading anything, or doing much online lately - too much school work! Only 2.5 weeks to go!

Just applied for another job. I think that brings my total up to 5...yeah not trying too hard yet. But I did some schmoozing yesterday when the CLA President and a few other CLA folks were down who hosted a wine and cheese.

I also finally registered for ALA Midwinter, so that's one more thing taken care of and I booked my hostel for when I'm in Boston; it's only 0.3 miles away fromt he convention center, so I should be able to walk and save on transit costs.

Liz and I just finished our poster for our poster session tomorrow at lunch for our Special Libraries class. We used nice silver board and used a blu background on our pages so it's all pretty. We even added a little pop-up question mark for fun.

Now, I have to write a summary of my experience with IPL.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Well, everyone else is talkign about it, so I will too. This seems like a hand-dandy tool to look up scholarly literature that's on the web.

From About Google Scholar:
"Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."

I tried it out searching for one of my Profs in author name, and it worked. I like how it also gives citations with links to "cited by" results. that's a pretty fun feature.

Wired News: RSS Edges Into the Bureaucracy

Wired News: RSS Edges Into the Bureaucracy

Well, this article from Wired tells us that even slow moving governmental agencies are finally catching up on the world of technology by starting to use RSS.

This article focuses on U.S. governmental agencies, I wonder, are Canadian ones using RSS? I know I've got them on my feed, so the must, right?

Ah, yes, they do. "Choose Your News" on the Government of Canada website gives us the low-down on Newsroom RSS feeds.

"The Government of Canada Newsroom offers 35 RSS news feeds that include headlines or titles, summaries of the news article and links to the full text documents."


They even give handy links on "What is RSS" and "Benefits of RSS". Good job!

Canadian Tire Pleads Guilty to Importing Ozone Depleting Substance

Canadian Tire Pleads Guilty to Importing Ozone Depleting Substance

Okay, so this is really not library related in any way - but I still think it's important.
I have friends who still work p-t at Canadian Tire in addition to their other p-t work. And the memories of going to Canadian Tire with my dad when I was a kid.

Did they really need those rear-view mirror kits? I'm sure they could've found a replacement!

Just don't forget your three R's: Reduce, Re-use and Recycle!

ontario library association - Super Conference

ontario library association

I was excited yesterday when I got mail. I love mail. Yesterday the information package for the OLA Super Conference came. I've already sat down and gone through all the sessions and picked my top 3 for each.
I was happy to see that there are a couple sessions presented by Jenny from the Shifted Librarian. I think it'll be cool to see her speak.

I have no clue where I'll be from January 1st, if I'll have a home or a job, but I'm planning on being in T.O. February 3-5, 2005!

Yahoo! News - Professor Starts Hockey Literature Course

Yahoo! News - Professor Starts Hockey Literature Course

I'm not really a Canadian due to the fact that I could care less about hockey, but I do watch whenever I have a boyfriend. Actually, hockey is one sport I understand and is usually interesting to watch!

This story was found via the Kept-Up Academic Librarian.

$23.4M TO IMPROVE LITERACY, STRENGTHEN B.C. LIBRARIES

$23.4M TO IMPROVE LITERACY, STRENGTHEN B.C. LIBRARIES

Yay! money for libraries!

I found this link by way of Peter Scott's Library Blog

LBGT Literature - and Emerald's free journal of the week

Emerald's free journal of the week is Collection Builiding. My library has subscription to it anyway, but I have never looked at this journal beforehand.

While browsing through the 3 free issues, I found an interesting article:
"Recent lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender fiction for teens: are Canadian public libraries providing adequate collections?" by Michele Hilton Boon and Vivian Howard .
Collection Building. 23: 3, 133-138.

This article does produce some of the results that many of us may have assumed - namely that LBGT titles are more likely to be at certain libraries than others. Yet, they also have some other conclusions that are interesting - such as how the number of reviews may be a factor in whether or not the LBGT titles are included in a collection.
Anyway, I thought it was a good read and figured it's free so might as well promote it!

election shoes?

Here's a post from my acquaintance, Mita, on her election shoes. I wonder how many people have little things they do or articles they wear for special occasions like elections?

Maybe next election I'll have to make an effort to find something special to wear.