Grim Tidings

The available coverage has a sanctimoniously outraged flavor to it – one that might surprise most casual readers, who are are unlikely to mourn the loss of stacks of centuries-old fishing records.

Nevertheless, without hyperbole or exaggeration, we are looking at the casual destruction of vast amounts of irreplaceable scientific research and data by the Canadian government.

In the kingdom of the 24-hour news cycle, a touch of sensationalism is often necessary in order to claim the audience’s attention, before they become distracted by the next “Ten Celebrity Secrets you WON’T BELIEVE” clickbait article that swims across their field of vision.

Certainly in the United States, where library funding is under constant siege, it benefits all of us to make sure that news items like this gain more visibility, and thereby provoke the right kinds of questions.  Libraries do much more than providing avid readers ammunition with which to kill an idle hour.  Many of them still hold vast amounts of data that has yet to be digitally archived, data which is capable of helping scientists and researchers to make discoveries that may yet prove vital in the quest to improve our environment, our quality of life, and our future.

So call it a libricide, if that gets people thinking about the kind of precedent this establishes.  It’s a conversation better had early than late.