The campaigns over the national archives and the national library -- to defund and diminish them, on the one hand, and to stand up for them as vital cultural institutions, on the other -- are gathering momentum every day. I'm going to try and track developments in this war in the coming months, because it looks like being a long one. And it matters.
For starters, you might follow Save Library and Archives Canada, which aspires to be a clearinghouse for information about the issue. The Canadian Historical Association and its new blog are on the case. This past weekend, the Writers' Union of Canada, in its annual meeting in Vancouver, condemned the archival cuts as an attack on culture (though I don't see that yet on the handsome redesigned website.)
More to come, I hope.
