Groups to join on Facebook.
BCTLA
BC Coalition for School Libraries
Librarians and Facebook
Libraries and Librarians
Librarians and Web 2.0
Library 2.0 Interest Group
Fair Copyright for Canada
If you are nervous about joining Facebook, click the Privacy button in the top right hand corner and control who can see your page. Only my friends can get into mine.
Val Hamilton
Monday, March 10, 2008
Thursday, March 6, 2008
The 100-Mile Diet rakes in nominations for writing
Vancouver Sun: 2008 March 6
The book The 100-Mile Diet, by J.B. MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, is a finalist for two B.C. Book Prizes this year. So is Ian McAllister’s The Last Wild Wolves, and so is Chris Harris’s Spirit in the Grass, about B.C.’s Cariboo-Chilcotin region.
The 100-Mile Diet, subtitled A Year of Local Eating, is nominated for the Hubert Evans NonFiction Prize and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize.
The Last Wild Wolves, subtitled Ghosts of the Great Bear Rainforest and illustrated with the author’s wolf photos, is up for the the regional prize and the B.C. Booksellers’ Choice Award.
Also a finalist for those two prizes is Spirit in the Grass, subtitled The Cariboo-Chilcotin’s Forgotten Landscape.
There are seven B.C. Book Prizes in all with the prominent one being the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Winners each receive $2,000 and will be announced April 26.
It looks as if judges will have a particularly hard time picking the winner of the Booksellers’ Choice Award, which is shared between an author and a publisher. In contention are five fine entries — not only McAllister’s wolves book (published by Greystone Books, an imprint of Douglas & McIntyre) and Harris’s Cariboo-Chilcotin book (Country Light Publishing), but also Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone (D&M); Mike McCardell’s The Blue Flames That Keep Us Warm (Harbour Publishing) and Fred Herzog: Vancouver Photographs, by Grant Arnold, Michael Turner and the Vancouver Art Gallery (D&M).
These are the finalists in the other six categories:
Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
David Chariandy, Soucouyant
Heather Burt, Adam’s Peak
Shaena Lambert, Radiance
Claire Mulligan, The Reckoning of Boston Jim
Mary Novik, Conceit
Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize
Theresa Kishkan, Limb
Robert Bringhurst, Everywhere Being Is Dancing
Patricia Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67
J.B. MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, The 100-Mile Diet
Don Gayton, Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden
Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
George McWhirter, The Incorrection
Christopher Patton, Ox A
rleen Paré, Paper Trail
Gillian Wigmore, Soft Geography
Rita Wong, Forage
Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize
Tim Bowling, The Lost Coast: Salmon, Memory and the Death of Wild Culture
Chris Harris, Spirit in the Grass
Barry Gough, Fortune’s a River: The Collision of Empires in the Pacific Northwest
J.B. MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, The 100-Mile Diet
Ian McAllister, The Last Wild Wolves
Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize
Gayle Friesen, For Now
Polly Horvath, The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane
David Jones, Baboon
Meg Tilly, Porcupine
John Wilson, The Alchemist’s Dream
Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize
Lisa Cinar (author/illustrator), The Day it All Blew Away
Nan Gregory (author), Luc Melanson (illustrator), Pink
Robert Heidbreder (author), Kady MacDonald Denton (illustrator), A Sea-Wishing Day
Ron Smith (author), Ruth Campbell (illustrator), Elf the Eagle
Kari-Lynn Winters (author), Ben Hodson (illustrator), Jeffrey and Sloth
The book The 100-Mile Diet, by J.B. MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, is a finalist for two B.C. Book Prizes this year. So is Ian McAllister’s The Last Wild Wolves, and so is Chris Harris’s Spirit in the Grass, about B.C.’s Cariboo-Chilcotin region.
The 100-Mile Diet, subtitled A Year of Local Eating, is nominated for the Hubert Evans NonFiction Prize and the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize.
The Last Wild Wolves, subtitled Ghosts of the Great Bear Rainforest and illustrated with the author’s wolf photos, is up for the the regional prize and the B.C. Booksellers’ Choice Award.
Also a finalist for those two prizes is Spirit in the Grass, subtitled The Cariboo-Chilcotin’s Forgotten Landscape.
There are seven B.C. Book Prizes in all with the prominent one being the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Winners each receive $2,000 and will be announced April 26.
It looks as if judges will have a particularly hard time picking the winner of the Booksellers’ Choice Award, which is shared between an author and a publisher. In contention are five fine entries — not only McAllister’s wolves book (published by Greystone Books, an imprint of Douglas & McIntyre) and Harris’s Cariboo-Chilcotin book (Country Light Publishing), but also Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone (D&M); Mike McCardell’s The Blue Flames That Keep Us Warm (Harbour Publishing) and Fred Herzog: Vancouver Photographs, by Grant Arnold, Michael Turner and the Vancouver Art Gallery (D&M).
These are the finalists in the other six categories:
Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
David Chariandy, Soucouyant
Heather Burt, Adam’s Peak
Shaena Lambert, Radiance
Claire Mulligan, The Reckoning of Boston Jim
Mary Novik, Conceit
Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize
Theresa Kishkan, Limb
Robert Bringhurst, Everywhere Being Is Dancing
Patricia Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67
J.B. MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, The 100-Mile Diet
Don Gayton, Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden
Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
George McWhirter, The Incorrection
Christopher Patton, Ox A
rleen Paré, Paper Trail
Gillian Wigmore, Soft Geography
Rita Wong, Forage
Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize
Tim Bowling, The Lost Coast: Salmon, Memory and the Death of Wild Culture
Chris Harris, Spirit in the Grass
Barry Gough, Fortune’s a River: The Collision of Empires in the Pacific Northwest
J.B. MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, The 100-Mile Diet
Ian McAllister, The Last Wild Wolves
Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize
Gayle Friesen, For Now
Polly Horvath, The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane
David Jones, Baboon
Meg Tilly, Porcupine
John Wilson, The Alchemist’s Dream
Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize
Lisa Cinar (author/illustrator), The Day it All Blew Away
Nan Gregory (author), Luc Melanson (illustrator), Pink
Robert Heidbreder (author), Kady MacDonald Denton (illustrator), A Sea-Wishing Day
Ron Smith (author), Ruth Campbell (illustrator), Elf the Eagle
Kari-Lynn Winters (author), Ben Hodson (illustrator), Jeffrey and Sloth
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Vancouver library draws fire for controversial speaker
Canadian Jewish News
By LAUREN KRAMER, Pacific Correspondent
Thursday, 06 March 2008
VANCOUVER — When the Vancouver Public Library agreed to host controversial author Greg Felton as a speaker during national Freedom to Read week last month, city librarian Paul Whitney says he had no idea the decision would generate such opposition and outrage.
Felton, a Vancouver-based journalist and teacher whose writings on Israel have been criticized as anti-Semitic, is the author of The Host and the Parasite: How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America, published last May by Dandelion Books in Phoenix, Ariz.
His Feb. 25 talk drew some 90 people, many of whom were very engaged and vocal during his presentation.
“There’s been a fair amount of correspondence, mostly but not exclusively from the Jewish community,” Whitney told The CJN. “I have found this whole issue very distressing, because I found myself in arguments with people for whom I have great respect.”
Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific region (CJC), had urged community members to call the library and contact Whitney to express their disappointment at Felton’s appearance.
The thesis of Felton’s book is that a Zionist “junta” operated on Sept. 11, 2001, and that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to exterminate the Jews.
The 50-year-old writer said he became interested in Israeli-Palestinian politics after the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
“I made the observation then that Israel can choose to be a Jewish state or a democracy, but it can’t be both,” he told The CJN in a phone interview on the day of his talk. “I feel that much of what we know about Israel and Palestine is blatantly false.
“For example, I researched Israel’s creation and found out that it was not created legally. A number of things brought me to realize that a massive war crime was perpetrated against the Palestinians by the Jewish immigrants after World War II, and I became quite upset by this. I got a lot of hate mail for stating what I thought was simply an obvious truth. But I felt it was my job to write about it.”
Felton twice approached the Vancouver Public Library (VPL) about an opportunity to speak about his book.
“The first time, last June, the librarian [he spoke to] said she was not interested.
When he returned in the fall, she looked at his book again and thought she could fit it under the auspices of Freedom to Read week,” said Jean Kavanagh, marketing and communications manager for the VPL.
The library’s decision to give Felton a platform outraged many members of Vancouver’s Jewish community and the community at large.
“What do you call it when the Vancouver Public Library decides to present Felton, an apologist for the book-banning, journalist-jailing Iranian theocracy, as the featured author on the evening of Feb. 25, and as the library’s contribution to national Freedom to Read Week?” Terry Glavin wrote Feb. 12 in the Vancouver Sun.
“In Felton’s words, Hamas is not an Islamist death cult animated by that classic anti-Semitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It’s the equivalent of the French resistance during the Second World War, the ‘passionate defender of Palestinians,’” Glavin wrote.
“There are no suicide bombings in Felton’s lexicon. There are only ‘sacrifice bombings. Israel itself is a creation of the Nazis. It’s the Zionist Reich.’”
CJC worked with the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and the Canada-Israel Committee to develop a response to Felton that it characterized in a letter to the Jewish community as “quiet but effective advocacy.”
In a meeting with the VPL, Congress requested that the library condemn Felton’s book and admit that it made an error in inviting him to speak. The library declined to cancel the event.
“We felt it would be a lose-lose situation to cancel the talk,” Whitney said. “We believe very strongly in the principle of freedom of expression, and because Freedom to Read is so fundamental to the library, we felt we needed to adhere to this principle, distasteful as we do find some of Felton’s arguments.”
“I feel the best anecdote to hate literature is exposure, getting stuff out,” Whitney continued, adding that the library ordered two copies of Felton’s book.
Though some members of the community called for a public protest at his talk, Congress opted against this strategy.
“Public protest will only provide him with more legitimacy and a larger platform from which to spread his message,” CJC wrote in its letter to the community.
“There is no advantage to engaging Mr. Felton in a debate, as there is no debating what he has to say. To do so would only legitimize his views and opinions.”
By LAUREN KRAMER, Pacific Correspondent
Thursday, 06 March 2008
VANCOUVER — When the Vancouver Public Library agreed to host controversial author Greg Felton as a speaker during national Freedom to Read week last month, city librarian Paul Whitney says he had no idea the decision would generate such opposition and outrage.
Felton, a Vancouver-based journalist and teacher whose writings on Israel have been criticized as anti-Semitic, is the author of The Host and the Parasite: How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America, published last May by Dandelion Books in Phoenix, Ariz.
His Feb. 25 talk drew some 90 people, many of whom were very engaged and vocal during his presentation.
“There’s been a fair amount of correspondence, mostly but not exclusively from the Jewish community,” Whitney told The CJN. “I have found this whole issue very distressing, because I found myself in arguments with people for whom I have great respect.”
Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific region (CJC), had urged community members to call the library and contact Whitney to express their disappointment at Felton’s appearance.
The thesis of Felton’s book is that a Zionist “junta” operated on Sept. 11, 2001, and that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to exterminate the Jews.
The 50-year-old writer said he became interested in Israeli-Palestinian politics after the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
“I made the observation then that Israel can choose to be a Jewish state or a democracy, but it can’t be both,” he told The CJN in a phone interview on the day of his talk. “I feel that much of what we know about Israel and Palestine is blatantly false.
“For example, I researched Israel’s creation and found out that it was not created legally. A number of things brought me to realize that a massive war crime was perpetrated against the Palestinians by the Jewish immigrants after World War II, and I became quite upset by this. I got a lot of hate mail for stating what I thought was simply an obvious truth. But I felt it was my job to write about it.”
Felton twice approached the Vancouver Public Library (VPL) about an opportunity to speak about his book.
“The first time, last June, the librarian [he spoke to] said she was not interested.
When he returned in the fall, she looked at his book again and thought she could fit it under the auspices of Freedom to Read week,” said Jean Kavanagh, marketing and communications manager for the VPL.
The library’s decision to give Felton a platform outraged many members of Vancouver’s Jewish community and the community at large.
“What do you call it when the Vancouver Public Library decides to present Felton, an apologist for the book-banning, journalist-jailing Iranian theocracy, as the featured author on the evening of Feb. 25, and as the library’s contribution to national Freedom to Read Week?” Terry Glavin wrote Feb. 12 in the Vancouver Sun.
“In Felton’s words, Hamas is not an Islamist death cult animated by that classic anti-Semitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It’s the equivalent of the French resistance during the Second World War, the ‘passionate defender of Palestinians,’” Glavin wrote.
“There are no suicide bombings in Felton’s lexicon. There are only ‘sacrifice bombings. Israel itself is a creation of the Nazis. It’s the Zionist Reich.’”
CJC worked with the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and the Canada-Israel Committee to develop a response to Felton that it characterized in a letter to the Jewish community as “quiet but effective advocacy.”
In a meeting with the VPL, Congress requested that the library condemn Felton’s book and admit that it made an error in inviting him to speak. The library declined to cancel the event.
“We felt it would be a lose-lose situation to cancel the talk,” Whitney said. “We believe very strongly in the principle of freedom of expression, and because Freedom to Read is so fundamental to the library, we felt we needed to adhere to this principle, distasteful as we do find some of Felton’s arguments.”
“I feel the best anecdote to hate literature is exposure, getting stuff out,” Whitney continued, adding that the library ordered two copies of Felton’s book.
Though some members of the community called for a public protest at his talk, Congress opted against this strategy.
“Public protest will only provide him with more legitimacy and a larger platform from which to spread his message,” CJC wrote in its letter to the community.
“There is no advantage to engaging Mr. Felton in a debate, as there is no debating what he has to say. To do so would only legitimize his views and opinions.”
Monday, March 3, 2008
CONFERENCE LINKS COMMUNITIES, EDUCATORS, STUDENTS
Ministry of Education: 2008 March 3
VANCOUVER – Education Minister Shirley Bond opened the third annual Interactive Innovations education conference, which began today with an interactive webcast to locations around B.C. and the Yukon Territory.
“We are using connective webcast technology both today at Interactive Innovations and at the pan-Canadian Literacy Forum in April,” said Bond. “By linking educators, parents and students from across B.C. and the Yukon – at sites in Vernon, Nelson, Prince George, Victoria, Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Whitehorse – B.C. is leading the way in collaborative education development.”
Each of the five major B.C. locations will focus on a different educational theme and will webcast a keynote speaker to the other sites. This year’s themes are:
VANCOUVER – Education Minister Shirley Bond opened the third annual Interactive Innovations education conference, which began today with an interactive webcast to locations around B.C. and the Yukon Territory.
“We are using connective webcast technology both today at Interactive Innovations and at the pan-Canadian Literacy Forum in April,” said Bond. “By linking educators, parents and students from across B.C. and the Yukon – at sites in Vernon, Nelson, Prince George, Victoria, Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Whitehorse – B.C. is leading the way in collaborative education development.”
Each of the five major B.C. locations will focus on a different educational theme and will webcast a keynote speaker to the other sites. This year’s themes are:
- Equitable Futures: Engaging all Learners;
- Literacy: Reaching Across Curriculum and Community;
- Student Success in the Middle and Secondary Years: What is Really Important?;
- The First 10 Years: Windows of Opportunity; and
- Leadership: Building Capacity.
Among the internationally known keynote speakers are Ruth Sutton, a specialist in assessment for learning and improvement, and Andy Hargreaves, a researcher in secondary-school success.
Interactive Innovations is another way the Province is using technology to transform B.C.’s education system to improve student achievement. The Province has provided support for the interactive conference through a partnership with the British Columbia Education Leadership Council and the British Columbia Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils. Grants for $370,000 provide funding to help run the conference, provide participants and others with follow-up learning opportunities and assist parent and student attendance at the conference. An archive of the webcast sessions and materials allows participants and others to access these expert resources throughout the year.
“With the support of the B.C. government and the hard work of people like conference organizer Audrey Hobbs-Johnson, Interactive Innovations has become a conference that celebrates the last year of learning, and kick-starts the next,” said BC Education Leadership Council CEO Cathy Elliott. “Web technology and our learning extension packages have allowed us to extend the educational value of these three days into any community in the province, all year.”
A special students’ program is also being webcast from Vancouver today. This is an opportunity for student leaders at sites around the province to learn about Olympic and Paralympic community initiatives and discuss the challenge of creating effective change in communities. Michael Furdyk, the co-founder and director of Technology for TakingITGlobal.org, will be the keynote speaker for the student program. TakingITGlobal.org is an online community for young people that engages thousands of youth in more than 200 communities and territories.
“Interactive Innovations is a great example of how technology can connect the province and allow us all to improve education in B.C.,” said Kim Howland, president of the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils. “By including parents and students at each of the venues, the conversations and possible solutions will be that much richer and creative.”
B.C. is proclaiming March as Education Month and this conference is just one of the many creative ways that the Province is celebrating its worldwide leadership in education and learning. The Interactive Innovations conference continues Tuesday; more information can be found at www.interactiveinnovations.ca.
The Province is working to make B.C. the best educated, most literate jurisdiction in North America. Since 2000-01, the Province has increased annual education funding by more than $1 billion while enrolment has declined by almost 50,000 students.
Media
contact:
Public Affairs Bureau
Ministry of Education
250 356-5963
For more information on government services or to subscribe to the Province’s news feeds using RSS, visit the Province’s website at www.gov.bc.ca.
BC History & BC150
I have created a new diigo Group (thanks Moira for taking another chunk of hours away from my library book!). I have bookmarked BC history and BC150 sites.
http://groups.diigo.com/groups/bchistory
http://groups.diigo.com/groups/bchistory
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Free Animated Download of Horton Hears a Who!
SLJ: 2008 February 29
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6536378.html?rssid=190
An animated digital version of Horton Hears a Who! is available for free to teachers throughout March, thanks to the National Education Association’s (NEA) Read Across America celebration of Theodor Seuss Geisel’s (Dr. Seuss) 104th birthday.
The download, now available on Kidthing, brings the classic book to life with animation, narration, and sound effects. Librarians, teachers, and care givers can turn the sound off and read the book aloud—just like their parents did.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6536378.html?rssid=190
An animated digital version of Horton Hears a Who! is available for free to teachers throughout March, thanks to the National Education Association’s (NEA) Read Across America celebration of Theodor Seuss Geisel’s (Dr. Seuss) 104th birthday.
The download, now available on Kidthing, brings the classic book to life with animation, narration, and sound effects. Librarians, teachers, and care givers can turn the sound off and read the book aloud—just like their parents did.
Free Animated Download of Horton Hears a Who!
SLJ: 2008 February 29
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6536378.html?rssid=190
An animated digital version of Horton Hears a Who! is available for free to teachers throughout March, thanks to the National Education Association’s (NEA) Read Across America celebration of Theodor Seuss Geisel’s (Dr. Seuss) 104th birthday.
The download, now available on Kidthing, brings the classic book to life with animation, narration, and sound effects. Librarians, teachers, and care givers can turn the sound off and read the book aloud—just like their parents did.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6536378.html?rssid=190
An animated digital version of Horton Hears a Who! is available for free to teachers throughout March, thanks to the National Education Association’s (NEA) Read Across America celebration of Theodor Seuss Geisel’s (Dr. Seuss) 104th birthday.
The download, now available on Kidthing, brings the classic book to life with animation, narration, and sound effects. Librarians, teachers, and care givers can turn the sound off and read the book aloud—just like their parents did.
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