Hi everyone,
An interesting petition that was forwarded to me. Distinguishing business/non-business urls as is done in other countries, would benefit students trying to evaluate Canadian Internet resources. Read on...
Karen Hering

> From: XXXXXXXXXXXX
> Date: March 23, 2007 4:53:31 PM PST (CA)
> Subject: Please sign my petition to CIRA
>
> I've started a petition to the Canadian Internet Registry Authority
> (CIRA) to insist that they distinguish between business and non-
> business URLs as part of their duties managing the dot-ca domain
> name registration. I know that this is a rather unusual request to
> make, but this is an issue that I feel very strongly about as
> evidenced by this shameless begging email.
>
> As a professional librarian who works both at a post-secondary
> academic institution and a public library, I see on a regular basis
> that many people have trouble navigating online and often confusion
> arises when there is no distinction between the URLs of commercial
> and non-commercial entities. In other countries, it is clear when
> a website is a business as indicated by URLs that end in dot-com in
> the US and dot-co-dot-uk in the UK. In Canada, there is no
> distinction so how is the average person who may not be web-savvy
> supposed to tell the difference between the real Univ. of Calgary's
> website ucalgary.ca and the commercial site universityofcalgary.ca?
>
> I have been unable to convince CIRA by email to make a distinction
> between business and non-business URLs a part of their mandate so I
> feel that I must resort to the forum of an online petition them to
> change their minds.
>
> I hope you will take the time to read over the petition and sign
> your name to show CIRA that a significant number of Internet users
> feel that a change is in order. If you could also pass this email
> onto everyone you know, I would be very grateful.
>
> http://www.petitiononline.com/CIRA/petition.html
> Thank you very much,

Hello everyone,

I have approximately 50 canisters of film. They have not been used in over four years and I doubt if they ever will be again. Only one or two have any kind of archival value--the rest are essentially useless. I would like to discard them but do not know of an appropriate procedure.

My question: Is anyone else in this situation? If so, how are you discarding these items?

Thanks ~ Barbara

We have an issue at Medicine Hat College that may be unique but we hope not because we need some help! For the past few years all of the students in the Health Studies program take a common course that is team-taught by up to 5 instructors. In this course the students are given assignments where they need to use digital video cameras to tape confidential interviews. They are then to hand a copy of the tape into the instructor. We have lots of cameras but never enough to meet the demand (as with everything, the assignments all seem to be due at the same time for all 150+ students) and there is a componded problem in that the new cameras that use the small format tapes are not compatable with the older models that the instructors use. Consequently we are expected to have enough cameras for all of the students plus the instructors. We cannot afford to do that!

To try to handle this we have been dubbing the small versions onto the older larger type (VHS) or onto DVD but this is very time consuming for the staff and the students all want them done at the same time (of course!).

If you or your AV department has encountered this same problem, how do you handle it?

I am posting the slides from Allison Sivak's presentation on the Powerpoint slides from Allison Sivak's presentation on the 8Rs Human Resources study, given at the Nov. 23, 2006 AACL meeting.

If you are interested in learning more about the 8Rs study and its findings, a project overview and copies of reports published thus far, are available at:

http://www.ls.ualberta.ca/8rs/home.html

Cheers,

Alice Swabey 

Brave the winter cold and come meet with your colleagues at the upcoming fall AACL meeting at Grant MacEwan College - City Centre Campus. Address is 105th through 108th St. and 104 Ave.

The meeting will be held in the Dining Room (6-313H) on the third floor (southeast corner) of 106 St Building. Cost of lunch is $15.00. Please email Karen Hering (heringk@macewan.ca) if you plan to attend indicating if you will be joining us for lunch. We would appreciate it if you have cash with you to pay for the lunch. - we will provide receipts. Please let us know of your attendance by Mon Nov 13.

Geoff will have the agenda out shortly with some very interesting presentations in the afternoon following our morning business meeting.

Parking prices and map: http://www.macewan.ca/web/services/ims/client/upload/ACF61FF.pdf

Please note: Due to construction of the new health centre, the west parkade is not accessible from 109th ST. Use the entrance on 104th Ave and 112 St. Closest parking (but not in abundance) would be Perimeter parking (#3) by 105 St. building. There is some free street parking around the streets behind the college.

Look forward to seeing you all here Thursday November 23, 2006 - 9 am.!

Karen