CBC’s Cross Country Checkup is coming to the University of Waterloo, Stratford Campus for a townhall hosted by Peter Mansbridge about the future of libraries in a digital age.
The show will be broadcast from Stratford campus’ atrium on Sunday, September 28, 2014. Members of the public are invited to attend and participate in the show. Doors open at 3:00 p.m. and the broadcast begins at 4:00 p.m.
“Cross Country Checkup is thrilled to be broadcasting from the University of Waterloo's Stratford Campus. It offers an opportunity to connect with people across Canada and peek into the future of knowledge and learning,” said Charles Shanks, senior producer. “Our guest host, Peter Mansbridge, is very excited to join our special broadcast from Stratford, a town he knows so well.”
The funding of public libraries is a hot issue during municipal elections in towns and cities across the country where campaigns are underway. Opponents to library funding cite the rise of online sources, such as Google, as alternative to municipal investment. Loyal users claim that libraries are the only truly democratic community centres of learning.
"This is an important and timely discussion not only for researchers and students but for all of us as digital access to information continues to increase,” said Christine McWebb a guest on the show and academic director at Stratford. “Libraries, and universities for that matter, will have to adapt and many institutions are moving in very interesting and innovative directions."
“The show promises to take the discussion broader than public library funding. We have seen libraries undergo significant transformations because many have embraced the digital technology and are slowly turning themselves into digital centres for information gathering and dissemination,” said McWebb. “The key issue here is how we as a society store the information of our age and ages past; how we access it, and disseminate it. And how we learn from it.”
In addition to Mansbridge and McWebb, the show’s guests include Ken Roberts from the Expert Panel of The Status and Future of Canada's Libraries and Archives. Roberts was Chief Librarian of the Hamilton Public Library from 1994 until his retirement in 2012.
“The University of Waterloo's Stratford campus is an ideal venue for the broadcast, because it is designed as a digital centre for among other things, the study of digital humanities,” said Anna-Liza Kozma, producer. “It does not have a library but it is plugged into other libraries and can also obtain books on order. We’ll be asking why doesn't a university campus have a library and how can it function without one?”
Full event details are listed on the University of Waterloo website.
