As we take our patrons' privacy very seriously, we want to inform you of a brief minor security breach incident that occurred on April 19th to our library operating system, SITKA. The leaked data was limited to email addresses or phone numbers of people who received automated messages such as such as holds notifications from SITKA from March 27th to April 19th. No individual library information, other identifying information, contents or subject lines of emails, or any information about people's checkouts, holds or fines were leaked. The BC Libraries Co-op that operates SITKA believes the main harm that can come from the leaking of this information is a potential increase in spam, phishing or spear phishing attacks.We have not had any reports of any issues yet. Please contact our Library Director Wendy Cinnamon if you have any concerns or if you have experienced any problematic communication.
"In the tradition of Lawrence Hill's The Illegal, Chris Cleave's Little Bee, and Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, and inspired by a real incident, this high-stakes and increasingly timely novel powerfully evokes what it means to leave behind everything you have ever known to seek out a better life in a strange land. When the rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and 500 fellow refugees from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war reaches the shores of British Columbia, the young father believes the struggles that he and his six-year-old son have long faced are finally over. But their journey has only just begun. The group is thrown into a detention processing centre, with government officials and news headlines speculating that among "the boat people" are members of a separtist militant organization responsible for countless suicide attacks--and that these insurgents now pose a threat to Canada's national security. As the refugees are subjected to heavy interrogation, Mahindan fears that a desperate act taken in Sri Lanka to fund their escape may now jeopardize his and his son's chance for asylum. Told through the alternating perspectives of Mahindan; his lawyer, Priya, a second-generation Sri Lankan-Canadian who reluctantly represents the refugees; and Grace, a third-generation Japanese-Canadian adjudicator who must decide Mahindan's fate as evidence mounts against him, The Boat People is a spellbinding and timely novel that provokes a deeply compassionate lens through which to view the current refugee crisis. Set in Vancouver, with riveting scenes in civil war-torn Sri Lanka, the novel asks difficult but necessary questions that will continue to be relevant as the world-wide crisis remains a reality for years to come."--