As is occasionally my habit when a big story breaks, I have gathered together all the relevant documents I could find concerning the recent controversy about the Canadian Conservative government's recent consolidation of the libraries at their Department of Fisheries & Oceans. The consolidation has resulted in severely weeded collections, library closures and staff layoffs.

I have more to say on the situation, probably next week, but I thought I'd compile this list first both for the common good and to help me frame my own thoughts.

As usual, if you note any errors or omissions in my, please let me know in the comments or by email. You can reach me at my work email, jdupuis at yorku dot ca, or my personal email, dupuisj at gmail dot com.

We haven't heard much from librarians at the DFO, so I'd very much welcome such feedback, either in the comments or via email. Please let us all know the details of what is going on, particularly with regards to how carefully and thoroughly the weeding was done as well as details on planning and resourcing for document delivery and digitization. Your anonymity will be respected.

General Resources

Links about other recent federal government library cuts & closures

The main list of articles, etc. for Department of Fisheries and Oceans library closures

Items with asterisks represent Government of Canada sites.

Update 2014.01.17. Updated list with several new items, mostly from January 10 but with a few older ones too.

Update 2014.01.27. Updated list with many items since last update as well as a bit of catch up on older ones. Added a section on other recent federal government library closures and cuts.

Update 2014.09.11. Huge update with slightly more than 100 items added to the three sections. Significantly I've added quite a bit on the closure of the library at l’Institut Maurice Lamontagne in Quebec, the only French-language library affected. I've also added quite a bit on federal government library cuts and closures in general. I may end up separating that material out into a separate chronological post at some point. As usual, please let me know about errors, omissions, accidental duplications, etc.