Shrinking Library Budgets

Mount Allison University is currently facing a budgetary crunch, and one of the areas that has been hit is the library budget. As someone who primarily researches on issues of French Canada and Quebec, I can accept that French-language journals and books would not be a top priority for an English-language university, especially since the Universite de Moncton is only a half hour away. They subscribe to a few major journals, and get some key books, which is a credit to them. I just spend a lot of time filling out inter-library loan forms.

What is not acceptable, in my books, is that when they lost their copy of Pierre Trudeau's Federalism and the French Canadians, they didn't immediately replace it. It's widely available second-hand at a bare minimum. This is one of the defining texts of Canadian identity and federalism, and the library is simply listing it as "Lost", with a due date of "NEVER".

ARGH! I think I have a second copy kicking around the house - I might just have to donate it. No respectable library should have its budget cut so far as to be unable to replace the essentials.

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