Canadian Academic Research Articles

Streaming Audio Services in Canadian Academic Libraries

This article looks at the use of streaming audio technologies in Canadian academic libraries. We examine the issues of access, technology, metadata, workflow, and copyright through two case studies: a digital archive of sound recordings at the University of Toronto and an electronic course reserves system at Concordia University. We also present the results from a survey of Canadian music librarians, which reveal minimal use of streaming audio technologies.

Variable pre-transfusion patient identification practices exist in the perioperative setting

The operating room (OR) has been identified by hemovigilance systems as a hospital area at high risk for transfusion errors. Where it was confirmed that transfusion products were being administered to the intended patient, we sought to determine the frequency that surgical patients' identification (ID) bands were inaccessible, the procedures used to identify patients when ID bands were inaccessible, and the effect on pre-transfusion bedside checks when ID bands were inaccessible. We tracked the accuracy, location, and accessibility of patient ID bands in the operative phase over three months at a single Canadian Academic Health Sciences Centre. We also evaluated the surgical team's compliance with transfusion policy, focusing on bedside checks. Forty-four percent of the 426 patients who were tracked had accessible ID bands intraoperatively. The ID bands were removed from 6.3% of surgical patients, primarily for the placement of additional vascular lines. Cardiovascular procedures, which have a high frequency of transfusions, had the highest rate of ID band removals (26.9%) and the third-to-lowest ID band accessibility rate (19.2%). General surgery procedures had the lowest percentage of accessible ID bands (14.8%). Sixty-four of the 77 patients observed receiving transfusions in the OR had inaccessible ID bands due to positioning of the patient's arm, interference from equipment, or the surgeon. No patient ID bands were used at bedside checks, and addressograph cards and anesthetic records were used in place of the ID band in 97.4% and 2.6% of transfusions, respectively. Due to intraoperative inacessibility, the system of patient ID banding has inherent limitations as a means for providing consistent pre-transfusion checks in surgical patients. A consistently accessible ID source that is continuously affixed to surgical patients should be introduced in the OR.

Chinese Graduate Students and the Canadian Academic Library: A User Study at the University of Windsor

This paper presents a pilot study that examined the information seeking behaviors of Chinese graduate students at the University of Windsor. Findings on current Chinese students' perceptions, expectations, and use of library services are highlighted including implications for academic libraries to meet international students' information needs.

Like the Sound of a Drum: Aboriginal Cultural Politics in Denendeh and Nunavut (review)

Reviewed by: Like the Sound of a Drum: Aboriginal Cultural Politics in Denendeh and Nunavut Ken Coates Like the Sound of a Drum: Aboriginal Cultural Politics in Denendeh and Nunavut. Peter Kulchyski. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2005. Pp. 312, $26.95 paper The Canadian North is in the midst of an important political revolution in national history. Only thirty years ago, the Yukon and Northwest Territories were governed as federal colonies. Aboriginal people played relatively minor political roles, the hand of the federal government was omnipresent, and meaningful regional autonomy seemed a long way off. With stunning speed, the government of Canada granted responsible government, negotiated Aboriginal claims settlements, expanded the powers of Indigenous self-government, and created the Inuit-controlled territory of Nunavut. Aboriginal leaders emerged both as important national figures and key players in the administration and planning of the territorial North. Peter Kulchyski has been a leading observer of this transformation. Like the Sound of a Drum is the most important contribution yet to the understanding of the nature and extent of this political transition. Through a comparative study of Fort Simpson and Fort Good Hope in the Northwest Territories and Pangnirtung in Nunavut, the author describes fundamental changes in northern politics. He moves well beyond a discussion of political structures and legislative changes to explain the deep cultural roots of the reorganization of power in the North. This is a theoretically informed, strongly argued, and insightfully researched book, one that will no doubt set the standard for scholars seeking to explore the intersection of political aspirations, Aboriginal culture, and political systems in Canada. Kulchyski builds his work around four main arguments. First, he argues that the ‘politics of form’ are of crucial importance in understanding Aboriginal communities in transition, as northern peoples resist the imposition of external political systems. He dismisses the assertion that northerners have to be ‘prepared’ for Aboriginal self-government [End Page 586] and says they are ready for these responsibilities, and on their own terms. Kulchyski makes clear his assumptions about the role of the state: ‘The State’s objective, aside from the wishes of its individual agents, is to find a mechanism to incorporate Aboriginal peoples into the dominant order. This is a structural exigency and will never cease as long as the dominant order depends on the logic of capital accumulation and the expansion of the commodity form’ (16). He found that Aboriginal people ‘experience the State as ruthless, unrelenting, totalizing machinery’ (16–17). His fourth argument is that there is a substantial chasm in language, communication, and core values between Aboriginal people and the state – he calls these structures ‘writing’ – and that meaningful negotiations requires the ability of both sides to bridge the divide. More directly, he asserts that Aboriginal people should not have to conform to the dictates of the state. Like the Sound of a Drum has much to recommend it. Kulchyski weaves in the book a sophisticated left-liberal analysis of the nature of Aboriginal governance and the role of the dominant society, capitalism, and democracy, a well-informed assessment of the state of play in northern, community-level politics, and an eloquent series of vignettes of his encounters with the realities of northern cultural politics. Scholars from many fields will find a great deal of value in his engagement with the theoretical and conceptual literature relating to Aboriginal cultures in transition. Chapter 6 offers a challenging evaluation of the leading arguments about self-government by Canadian academics and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples; the discussion of Alan Cairns’s work is particularly noteworthy. One hopes that Kulchysky’s conclusions will be tested in other settings – the Yukon and the northern provinces, in particular – and that a similar kind of evaluation will be undertaken of the nature of the national and territorial bureaucracies. In completing the important and admirable task of revealing the nuances, strengths, and substance of Aboriginal politics, Kulchysky has worked from a very stereotypic description of the role of the state, without the sensitivity and depth that he has provided for Indigenous political cultures. Kulchysky has succeeded admirably in the tasks he set for himself. The book provides an effective introduction...

Research the American Way: The Role of US Elites in Disseminating and Legitimizing Canadian Academic Accounting Research

This paper examines authorship distribution in a premiere Canadian-based research journal, Contemporary Accounting Research (CAR). It provides empirical evidence of a strong US elite dominance in the research agenda of a non-US research community. This is illustrated through a consistently higher proportion of authorship representation and participation of US elites (measured by doctoral origins) in CAR and its associated Conference. We also found that a small group of Canadian schools (measured by academic affiliations) contributes the most publications to CAR but their representation on the CAR editorial board and participation at the PhD Consortium was limited. We express our concern as to the constructive role of CAR as a top-tier journal in the dissemination of accounting research. We draw upon discussion on a European research tradition (represented by Accounting, Organizations and Society and The European Accounting Review), and its general approach to accounting research, which is perceived as distinct from the US elite approach (Lukka and Kasanen, 1996). Insights gained help widen the acceptable research in top tier journals such as CAR to further its aim to enhance geographical and intellectual diversity.

Character versus Circumstance in Recent Canadian Historical Biography

Character versus Circumstance in Recent Canadian Historical Biography Honore Jaxon: Prairie Visionary. By Donald B. Smith. Regina: Coteau, 2007. 312 pp. $24.95 (paper) ISBN 978-1-55050-367-8. John A: The Man Who Made Us; The Life and Times of John A. Macdonald. Vol. 1, 1815-1867. By Richard Gwynn. Toronto: Random House, 2007. 560 pp. $23.00 (eBook) ISBN 978-0-307-37135-5. $23.00 (paper) ISBN 978-0-679-31476-9. 528 pp. $37.00 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-679-31475-2. Sir William C. Macdonald: A Biography. By William Fong. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007. 336 pp. $34.95 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-77353-304-2. Thomas D'Arcy McGee. Vol. 1, Passion, Reason, and Politics, 1825-1857. By David Wilson. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008. 448 pp. $39.95 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-77353-357-8. The View from Murney Tower: Salem Bland, the Late-Victorian Controversies, and the Search for a New Christianity. Vol. 1. By Richard Allen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. 496 pp. $80.00 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-80209-748-4. There it is again, the complaint that Canadan academic historians do not write about the kinds of things that the ordinary history-reading people like to read. This time, the charge is levelled by a popular historian, Dan Francis, in an online forum, HistoryWire (Francis 2008). History as an industry is booming these days, and historians everywhere are writing for an enthusiastic public, except, apparently, in Canada, where the academics remain cloistered in their ivory tower. There may well be some truth to the argument, though when the critics do not actually read books by Canadian academics to make their case (Francis did not), there may also be a dollop of intellectual laziness involved. Still, one might be forgiven for thinking that the structure of Canadian publishing nurtures cloisteredness: because a state subsidy exists only for scholarly books that are not likely to sell in the mass market, publishers hardly dare print large runs or engage in mass-marketing, for fear of losing that crucial bit of subsidy. It is probably easier to get a scholarly book into print in Canada than elsewhere, but possibly harder to reach a general authence. It is also true that academics often use theories and language that non-academics find repellent, but it tends to be truer of books by social scientists than by historians. Perhaps a reasonable comparison could be done by choosing a genre that both academics and professional authors write, such as biography. Most biographers consciously tailor their writing to a nonspecialized authence. Where once biography was in disrepute amongst academics, today historians of all kinds write biographies. A Journal of Historical Biography, published out of the University College of the Fraser Valley with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, draws scholars, editors, and thoughtful reflections on the act of writing biographies from around the world. Invited by the Journal of Canadian Studies to review five Victorian biographies, I wondered whether this small sample exemplified the kinds of differences to which the pundits object. There are three books by academics and two by professional writers (one of whom has a doctorate). The subjects are a priest, a businessman, and three politicians, stretching that term to include Riel's secretary, Honore Jaxon, ne William Jackson. The book's author describes him as a visionary, and that is a term that could be applied to three of the five subjects, all of whom lived lives on the left, though one of those three migrated to the centre-right. The other two biographees were different: both, named Macdonald, were enormously successful at their chosen field of endeavour (politics and business) and became two of the most powerful men in late- Victorian Canada. Both Macdonalds are portrayed as pragmatists by their authors, who are the two professional writers in the bunch. …

Professional, Critical, Policy, and Public Academics in Canada

This paper analyzes the results of a unique 2000 study of a representative sample of Canadian academics (n=3,318) in order to provide the first empirical assessment of Burawoy’s intellectual types: professional, critical, policy, and public intellectuals. After determining the distribution of academic types in the Canadian professoriate as a whole, the paper demonstrates that academic types fall along a left-right continuum, different fields of study contain different distributions of academic types, and public, policy, and critical academics tend to have different socio-demographic and economic characteristics than professional academics. The picture that emerges from the analysis is of a professoriate whose contours substantiate the broad outlines of Burawoy’s typology.

Multiple sclerosis and academic work: Socio‐spatial strategies adopted to maintain employment

Maintaining paid work and the occupational identity it entails after onset of multiple sclerosis is important and beneficial. Research consistently shows that employees with multiple sclerosis who are more highly educated and in positions with greater occupational prestige are more likely to remain in the workforce. We ask: what is it about the specific workplaces in which such workers are employed that facilitates these employment outcomes? To answer this question we conducted an exploratory pilot study involving 10 semi‐structured interviews with Canadian academics with multiple sclerosis. Respondents’ adoption of socio‐spatials trategies related to travel, spatio‐temporalr outines, and social networks was central to maintaining a place in the academic workforce. Factors such as flexibility, access to resources, and symptom fluctuation enabled these strategies. The findings show that the relationships between place and occupation are complex in that multiple physical and social spaces and also roles are invoked in maintaining a particular occupational identity.

Postoperative Low‐Molecular‐Weight Heparin Bridging Is Associated with an Increase in Wound Hematoma Following Surgery for Pacemakers and Implantable Defibrillators

The perioperative management of patients receiving oral anticoagulation therapy (OAC) who undergo pacemaker (PM) and defibrillator (ICD) surgery remains controversial. Low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) is often used; however, wound hematoma is a common complication. At a single academic Canadian center, between July 2003 and June 2005, details of perioperative OAC bridging and the rate of wound hematoma requiring reoperation or interruption of OAC were reviewed for all patients receiving LMWH bridging for PM or ICD surgery. A total of 148 PM/ICD patients underwent perioperative bridging with LMWH. A significant hematoma occurred in 23 patients, requiring reoperation in three patients. No patient died, developed infection, or stroke. The initial bridging regimen included LMWH (enoxaparin 1 mg/kg BID) given until evening prior to surgery, and reinitiated on postoperative day 3. In response to high rates of postoperative hematoma, subsequent protocols omitted the LMWH on the evening before surgery, all postoperative LMWH, or both. The use of LMWH the night before surgery had no effect on hematoma rates (12% vs 17%, P = 0.62); however, the use of any postoperative LMWH increased hematoma rates (23% vs 8%, P = 0.01). Hematoma rates were not increased in patients receiving acetylsalicylic acid (19% vs 16%, P = 0.62) or clopidogrel (25% vs 17%, P = 0.54). In a multivariate analysis, independent predictors of significant wound hematoma included postoperative LMWH (P = 0.001), a higher international normalized ratio on the day of surgery (P = 0.03), and male sex (P = 0.05). Elimination of postoperative LMWH was associated with a substantial reduction in hematoma rates following PM and ICD surgery.

Activist Academe, Then and Now

Activist Academe, Then and Now Linda Hutcheon (bio) Founded in 1957, ACUTE/ACCUTE may not be as old or as large an organization as the mla (founded in 1883), but its history is now a long and especially significant one for Canadians: not only does this institution articulate and embody the principles and goals of our profession but it has also become its public voice in the larger world. While some Canadian academics have always been members of the mla, it was acute that first gave us our sense of ourselves as professing English specifically in Canada. In 1982, Marjorie Garson made us a gift of an astutely analytic as well as informative account of acute’s somewhat difficult coming into being, of our developing sense of our specialized academic identity (something we take for granted today), and of the expansion of our association’s focus from its initial concern for scholarship to include pedagogy and broader professional and practical issues (including departmental governance, professionalization of graduate students, the ethics of publishing, and so on). Providing a forum for our discussions—our sometimes acerbic disputes as much as our shared concerns—acute/accute has given us the institutional space to think together and in this way to become a lively democratic community, eschewing the self-perpetuating elites that plague some professional organizations. We are accute. [End Page 11] After its founding, acute’s concerns rapidly moved beyond the ever-important annual conference to the publishing of our own journal, English Studies in Canada (to counter the American flood), and from there to take an even more public role and represent the interests and concerns of our profession (and of the humanities in general) to the university, to the government, to funding agencies, and to the media. In so doing, it has helped others understand what it is that teachers of English teach, what it is that researchers in English research—and, even more importantly, why we do so. In defining and defending the literary arts and their study, acute/accute’s endeavours on our collective behalf have also worked to fight those feelings of beleaguered secondariness that literature scholars and teachers have sometimes been made to experience. Neither acute nor accute has ever shied away from taking an activist political role and, even more impressively, doing so as soon as a problem was identified. In the face of plummeting job possibilities for recent phds, as early as 1978 it established the Committee on Unemployment and Underemployment. The subsequent recommendations of the Rudrum Report (1979) are sobering to read today, however. One of its suggestions was that vigorous action be taken to combat the then-current debilitating job situation by improving the conditions of limited-term appointments, while at the same time working to phase them out in favour of tenure-track appointments. It argued the need for greater openness and honesty on the part of graduate programs in explaining to prospective entrants the actual employment situation. It also outlined the benefits of a more creative and inclusive approach to alternative kinds of employment. While it is likely safe to say that today’s graduate students are more than aware of the academic job situation they face, I am not convinced that we have really ever initiated any kind of action, vigorous or otherwise, to combat the other problems. It is never too late, however. I realize that accute cannot fight this kind of larger institutional battle alone, of course, but I do hope it will continue to work to increase awareness of the continuing situation’s collateral as well as actual damage—for universities, departments, faculty, students, and society at large. This constant erosion, over the last thirty years, of tenure-track positions and this continuing casualization of the labour force have had many effects, not least among them the increased demand for “research productivity” at every level (from the first job to tenure and promotion), even as what is institutionally valued as acceptable “research” has narrowed. acute’s controversial 1976 Priestley Report had deplored early on the “publish or perish” mentality of English departments in Canada, something [End Page 12] that the much more recent report of the mla...

ACUTE: The First Twenty-Five Years, 1957–1982

From the perspective of 1982, and an Association membership of over nine hundred, it is possible to look back with some satisfaction on the twenty-five years that have elapsed since that June Sunday in 1957 when eighty-two teachers of English from across Canada met with the Learned Societies at the University of Ottawa and voted to continue to meet on an annual basis as nation-wide professional organization. The decision filled need which had been felt for decades, and was the culmination of years of preliminary effort on the part of number of individuals whose lives and careers were interwoven with the development of English studies in Canada. ACUTE emerged partly out of other, broader-based organizations. The oldest of the Learned Societies, the Royal Society of Canada, had been founded in 1882 with the intention that it should, like its English and French prototypes, serve as focus for the intellectual life of the nation in both the arts and the sciences. In their 1947 study The Humanities in Canada, Watson Kirkconnell and A.S.P. Woodhouse recommended the establishment of an association dedicated more particularly to the humanities, and their suggestion resulted, in 1950-51, in the organizing of the Humanities Association of Canada (HAC). By this time, however, teachers of English--who were heavily represented in the Humanities Association--felt the need for still more specialized association. At the ACUTE dinner given in his honour in 1978, Clarence Tracy was to recall the situation of the English specialist before the founding of ACUTE. He spoke of the frustration he had himself felt, as young academic teaching on the prairies in the 1940s, in attempting to maintain his scholarly interests in isolation from colleagues with whom he could discuss them; of the lack of official encouragement of the discipline--the absence of travel and research grants, or indeed any form of financial support of the English scholar; of the scarcity of outlets for scholarly publication in Canada; and of the minority position of Canadian academics at the conventions of the Modern Language Association, the only meeting-place for Canadian scholars in the North American academic community. The 1957 meeting had been preceded by number of other attempts to organize national association of English professors. In the late 1920's there were two conferences held in the West; the University of Toronto and Dalhousie were represented at the second of these. The first national conference was held in Toronto in 1928, attracting representatives from UBC, Alberta, Manitoba, Dalhousie, Queen's, and Acadia, as well as from Toronto itself. It was not until 1950, however, that steps were taken towards setting up national organization which would meet on more regular basis. In that year, three Canadian delegates to the International Conference of University Professors of English at Oxford revived the idea of Canadian association. They were A.S.P. Woodhouse (Toronto), F.M. Salter (Alberta) and H.J. Alexander (Queen's). These three, joined by Roy Daniells (UBC) and Claude Bissell (Toronto), arranged what Clarence Tracy was later to call a dry run organized by Woodhouse and Co. in Toronto ... where, I think, I read my first 'learned' paper. This meeting, held in the spring of 1952, was funded by $2000 Rockefeller Foundation grant secured through the Humanities Research Council, by the University of Toronto itself, and by contributions from the other universities involved, each paying $30 per delegate towards travel fund (amounting to about $2000) which was then disbursed to individuals in proportion to the distance travelled (Some variation of this formula for sharing costs continued for years). Both President Sidney Smith of the University of Toronto, in his welcome to the delegates, and Professor Woodhouse, in his opening remarks, recalled the fine tradition of English studies in Canada, Smith suggesting that the decline of the classics was leading to the preeminence of English as the central humanities discipline. …

Mind Technologies. Humanities Computing and the Canadian Academic Community. * Raymond Siemens and David Moorman (eds).

Mind Technologies. Humanities Computing and the Canadian Academic Community. * Raymond Siemens and David Moorman (eds).

Time, Stress and Intellectual Engagement in Academic Work: Exploring Gender Difference

This article is based on a pilot study that examines the effects of recent organizational and public policy changes on Canadian academics' work practices and academic culture. It explores the differences between the use of online technologies by women and male academics in managing these effects. It interprets the complex and often contradictory findings of the study through the lens of time theorization, and speculates about the broader cultural implications of academics' changing work practices, including the possibility of a gestalt shift in the identity of the university, less as a site of research and reflection on society and increasingly as a productive and efficient part of the economy.

Canadas of the Mind: The Making and Unmaking of Canadian Nationalisms in the Twentieth Century (review)

Reviewed by: Canadas of the Mind: The Making and Unmaking of Canadian Nationalisms in the Twentieth Century R. Douglas Francis Canadas of the Mind: The Making and Unmaking of Canadian Nationalisms in the Twentieth Century. Norman Hillmer and Adam Chapnick, eds. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007. Pp. 326, $29.95 paper Creating and defining Canadian nationalism was the great pastime of Canadian intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; chronicling that nationalism has been the pastime of Canadian historians in late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Canadas of the Mind is yet another attempt to analyze the elusive subject of Canadian nationalism. The editors note that 'the inspiration for this book comes from Peter Russell's multifaceted Nationalism in Canada, published exactly forty years ago' (ix.) Thus, a useful way to review Canadas of the Mind is to compare it to its earlier companion to show in what ways the theme of nationalism and the way historians examine it has or has not changed over time. Nationalism in Canada was the work of the University League for Social Reform, a think tank of Canadian academics committed to reform. The contributors to that volume were also writing in the heyday of Canadian nationalism, on the eve of Canada's centennial and amidst rising Quebec nationalism. They were also conscious of nationalist unrest in the rest of the world. Peter Russell, the editor, and [End Page 445] Frank Underhill, who wrote the foreword, spoke to these currents of change; there was, in essence, a sense of urgency and excitement about the topic and the book. The authors were on a 'mission.' Canadas of the Mind, by contrast, grew out of a conference by the Organization for the History of Canada on the subject, and the introduction to the volume lacks the dynamism of its predecessor. The editors also fail to note the need for such a volume, and what distinguishes the writings in Canadas of the Mind from earlier writings on the subject. The editor of Nationalism in Canada organized the essays around themes – The Land, The People, The Federation, Policy, Culture, New Perspectives, and Ideology, often with articles that offered opposing perspectives on the topic. Canadas of the Mind consists of fourteen essays on the theme of nationalism but otherwise lacks unity. If these are some of the general differences between the two volumes, one of the striking similarities is the topics discussed. Essays appear in both volumes on the North, technology, the National Policy, foreign policy, federal–provincial relations, culture, and multiculturalism. Thus, while things have changed over the interval of forty years, much remains the same, particularly the subjects that have formed the basis of Canadian national mythology. Still, Canadas of the Mind is not simply a rehash of Nationalism in Canada. For one thing, the new volume has a refreshing new topic: Aboriginal nationalism. Michael Behiels looks at Aboriginal nationalism over and against Canadian nationalism since the white paper of 1969 and concludes that the former lost out to the latter because it posited a form of nationalism that would lead logically to Aboriginal separation from Canada, and hence was unacceptable. David Newhouse, an Aboriginal scholar, highlights the success of Aboriginal leaders over the past thirty years at cultivating a strong Aboriginal nationalism, which has enabled them to stand up to the Canadian government and achieve concessions. Another significant difference between the two volumes is the approach. The articles in Canadas in the Mind offer a postmodern perspective. They deconstruct familiar subjects of Canadian nationalism to show that they are not what the myth-makers claimed them to be. The result is a refreshingly new look at familiar topics, reassuring the reader that there are still new things to be said about Canadian nationalism. One notable absence in Canadas of the Mind – which was not the case in Nationalism in Canada – is of articles on Quebec nationalism written by Quebecers. Is this a sign of a significant change between the 1960s and the early twenty-first century? Has Quebec nationalism lost its appeal as a subject of analysis by Quebec [End Page 446] historians? The omission is a glaring weakness in...

National Evaluation of Policies on Individual Financial Conflicts of Interest in Canadian Academic Health Science Centers

Conflicts of interest (COI) in research are an important emerging topic of investigation and are frequently cited as a serious threat to the integrity of human participant research. To study financial conflicts of interest (FCOI) policies for individual investigators working in Canadian academic health centers. Survey instrument containing 61 items related to FCOI. All Canadian academic health science centers (universities with faculties of medicine, faculties of medicine and teaching hospitals) were requested to provide their three primary FCOI policies. Number of all centers and teaching hospitals with policies addressing each of the 61 items related to FCOI. Only one item was addressed by all 74 centers. Thirteen items were present in fewer than 25% of centers. Fewer than one-quarter of hospitals required researchers to disclose FCOI to research participants. The role of research ethics boards (REBs) in hospitals was marginal. Asking centers to identify only three policies may not have inclusively identified all FCOI policies in use. Additionally, policies at other levels might apply. For instance, all institutions receiving federal grant money must comply with the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans. Canadian centers within the same level (for instance, teaching hospitals) differ significantly in the areas that their policies address and these policies differ widely in their coverage. Presently, no single policy in any Canadian center informs researchers about the broad range of individual FCOI issues. Canadian investigators need to understand the environment surrounding FCOI, be able to access and follow the relevant policies and be confident that they can avoid entering into a FCOI.

Mind Technologies: Humanities Computing and the Canadian Academic Community (review)

Reviewed by: Mind Technologies: Humanities Computing and the Canadian Academic Community Willard Mccarty Raymond Siemens and David Moorman, editors. Mind Technologies: Humanities Computing and the Canadian Academic Community. University of Alberta Press. xlii, 317. $44.95 The best contributions to this book reach beyond the impressive range of Canadian accomplishments to the core problematic of the field: what the mechanical has to do with the humanistic. Some less adventurous pieces document solid work in the older disciplines. Some are more vestiges of the past than indications of a desirable future. Here I will concentrate on the first of these. [End Page 138] Humanities computing is approximately sixty years old but a mere adolescent in self-awareness and so is bestirred by conflicting thoughts, as here. But computing's inexhaustible potential for imagining and exploring possibilities gives deeper reason for the multivocality. When in his fine essay Michael Best admonishes us to be experimental and adventurous, he names the game, not just the current state of play. The book's URLs and other signs of the passing moment similarly instruct us how to read it: not for foundations but for a trajectory. Its interdisciplinarity instructs us further, to read primarily for the methodological contributions, such as in Murray McGillivray's piece, for his persuasive document-centred approach to serving traditional goals better than print. Stephen Reimer asserts (as Ian Lancashire's and Russon Wooldridge's lexicographic projects impressively suggest) that computing changes research fundamentally 'by extending our reach and improving our efficiency.' As beings in space-time, we dismiss either at our peril; if wise, we investigate the cognitive differences they make. Lancashire's concern with stylometry thus directs us from mind to brain, and so to the possibility of a bridge toward the neurosciences. One need only look to the proceedings of last year's 'Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity' conference (http://asc.nhc.rtp.nc.us/) to see how promising that and similar bridges are. Robert Good and Charles Clarke report on software that uses but avoids the limitations of the highly structured metadata of digital media collections. The fundamental question raised is familiar: what is text? The best response comes at the end, in Geoffrey Rockwell's afterword: (1) our theories are craft-theories, arising from and informing our digital constructions; (2) these theories begin to emerge from silence when we must say why one tool is preferable to another for a given job; and (3) any text we interact with is embedded in tools that authorize or thwart different types of interpretation. Seeds of a fine and much-needed book are here. The editors' argument for modelling may suggest that tools map scholarly processes move-for-move. After arguing for the importance of statistical assumptions, the late Paul Fortier points out that the increasing sophistication of software obscures them but that we can infer the suitability of procedures no one could carry out by hand. Thus complexity forces us from strict imitation toward the synthetic and creative, as for example in contemporary physics. It is one of computing's many gifts to us. Based on their experience at McMaster, Andrew Mactavish and Rockwell argue that models from the creative visual and performing arts are what we need to respond to the problematic status of method [End Page 139] and technique in the humanities. Both are at home in the arts, the crafts, and in engineering, which informs software development. If anything, the authors underplay the potential of such an expanded practice to untie us from what theoretical biologist Robert Rosen in Essays on Life Itself describes as 'a mind-set of reductionism, of looking only downward toward subsystems, and never upward and outward' to systems with a life of their own. Both the Orlando Project described by Susan Brown et al. and the Virtual Buildings Project described by John Bonnett turn on the superiority of active engagement over passive consumption. The ambition of Orlando is to advance the historiography of literature, first by encoding the entities and structures of a literary history in markup, then getting their audience to engage with that markup as end-makers of knowledge, not mere end-users of information. Virtual Buildings is based on...

Funding for continuing medical education

We are pleased that academic detailing was mentioned as an underutilized strategy in a recent CMAJ editorial on continuing medical education.[1][1] Academic detailing programs presently exist in 6 provinces. These programs have formed the Canadian Academic Detailing Collaboration to share expertise

157: Stemi Treatment Delays in an Academic Canadian Emergency Department

157: Stemi Treatment Delays in an Academic Canadian Emergency Department

Differentiating Brand Assets from Goodwill Assets: The Artefact Based Approach to the Accounting Recognition of Marketing Related Assets

This article was submitted to and presented at the Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA) Annual Conference.

The Availability of MeSH in Vendor-Supplied Cataloguing Records, as Seen Through the Catalogue of a Canadian Academic Health Library

This study examines the prevalence of medical subject headings in vendor-supplied cataloguing records for publications contained within aggregated databases or publisher collections. In the first phase, the catalogue of one Canadian academic medical library was examined to determine the extent to which medical subject headings (MeSH) are available in the vendor-supplied records. In the second phase, these results are compared to the catalogues of other Canadian academic medical libraries in order to reach a generalization regarding the availability of MeSH headings for electronic resources. MeSH was more widespread in records for electronic journals but was noticeably lacking in records for electronic monographs, and for Canadian publications. There is no standard for ensuring MeSH is assigned to monograph records for health titles and there is no library in Canada with responsibility for ensuring that Canadian health publications receive Medical Subject Headings. It is incumbent upon libraries using MeSH to ensure that vendors are aware of this need when purchasing record sets.