Established	1975
Coordinator	Ulli Diemer
Office	Toronto (Canada)
Homepage	www.connexions.org
Main goal	Work for social change

Connexions (full name Connexions Information Sharing Services) is the central online library

Library

In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...

 and archive

Archive

An archive is a collection of historical records, or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of an organization...

 for Canada’s movements for social change. The non-profit project also maintains a comprehensive directory of Canadian associations and NGOs.

Founded in 1975 as a national information clearinghouse for grassroots

Grassroots

A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...

 activists involved with urban and rural poverty issues, the project was originally called the Canadian Information Sharing Service. The name was changed to Connexions in 1978 to more clearly identify the project’s action-oriented goal of connecting grassroots activists with each other and with information, ideas, and issues. The scope of the project expanded to include Native rights, third world development, women’s empowerment, peace, human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

, and other issues. The project disseminated information through the newsletter-format Connexions Digest, which received documents and materials from participants across the country, and distilled them into a subject-indexed summary format.

Print-based for the first two decades of its existence, Connexions published more than 4,000 abstracts

Abstract (summary)

An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject or discipline, and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's purpose. When used, an abstract always appears at the beginning of a...

 summarising the content of documents, articles, reports, and books, as well as profiles of organizations and projects, becoming in the process a resource and networking tool for Canadian activists and researchers concerned with social justice

Social justice

Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...

 issues.

In the 1980s and 1990s it published The Connexions Annual, a widely distributed sourcebook of social and environmental alternatives. The Connexions Annual's combined articles surveying current issues confronting movements for social change

Social change

Social change refers to an alteration in the social order of a society. It may refer to the notion of social progress or sociocultural evolution, the philosophical idea that society moves forward by dialectical or evolutionary means. It may refer to a paradigmatic change in the socio-economic...

 with lists of resources and directory listings and profiles of grassroots groups working for change. The last print edition of The Connexions Annual appeared in 1994.

In the mid-1990s, Connexions moved online, and added new resources to its online library while pursuing an ongoing program of digitizing its print-based resources. Connexions Online hosts an online library of more than 7,000 documents related to human rights, civil liberties

Civil liberties

Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...

, social justice, economic alternatives, democratization

Democratization

Democratization is the transition to a more democratic political regime. It may be the transition from an authoritarian regime to a full democracy, a transition from an authoritarian political system to a semi-democracy or transition from a semi-authoritarian political system to a democratic...

, women’s issues, gay, lesbian, and bisexual rights, First Nations and Native Peoples issues, alternative lifestyles, and environmental issues.

In addition to using Library of Congress

Library of Congress Classification

The Library of Congress Classification is a system of library classification developed by the Library of Congress. It is used by most research and academic libraries in the U.S. and several other countries; for example, Australia and Taiwan, R.O.C. It is not to be confused with the Library of...

 and Dewey Decimal

Dewey Decimal Classification

Dewey Decimal Classification, is a proprietary system of library classification developed by Melvil Dewey in 1876.It has been greatly modified and expanded through 23 major revisions, the most recent in 2011...

 subject classifications, Connexions also uses a controlled vocabulary

Controlled vocabulary

Controlled vocabularies provide a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. They are used in subject indexing schemes, subject headings, thesauri, taxonomies and other form of knowledge organization systems...

 database of more than 20,000 subject headings developed by Connexions in association with Sources

Sources (website)

Sources is a Web portal for journalists, freelance writers, editors, authors, and researchers, focusing especially on human sources: experts and spokespersons who are prepared to answer reporters’ questions or make themselves available for on-air interviews....

, the Canadian directory of experts and spokespersons. Connexions has worked with Sources since 1993, when Sources publisher Barrie Zwicker, a media critic and peace activist, asked Connexions Co-ordinator Ulli Diemer to lead a joint project to develop an online directory of Canadian associations.

The Connexions Directory of Associations, a separate resource also available on the Connexions site, now lists more than 5,000 organizations, indexed under more than 20,000 topics.

Connexions also maintains the Connexions Calendar which lists Canadian events related to social change.

Connexions produces an extensive compilation of materials on Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 and Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

, featuring resources for “those who believe that a solution to the conflict is possible only on the basis of justice, equality, respect for human rights, mutual recognition and an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.”

Connexions maintains other specialised collections, including a selection of political manifesto

Manifesto

A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...

s from 1776 to the present.

Connexions hosts the complete archive of The Red Menace, a libertarian socialist

Libertarian socialism

Libertarian socialism is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production...

 newsletter published from 1976 to 1980 by the Libertarian Socialist Collective, as well as a partial archive of Seven News, a community newspaper founded by community activists associated with John Sewell

John Sewell

John Sewell, CM is a Canadian political activist and writer on municipal affairs; he was the mayor of Toronto, Ontario from 1978 to 1980.-Background:...

, the Toronto alderman who later to become reform mayor of Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

.

Political Orientation

Connexions describes its political orientation as left-pluralism, that is, including a diversity of views on the progressive side of the political spectrum. The writers’ guidelines observe that “our biases are reflected in which works we select for inclusion in Connexions, but within our selection guidelines, we endeavour to include materials taking different points of view and proposing a variety of goals and strategies. We try to provide our readers with neutral summaries of the works we abstract, leaving it to the readers to make their own judgments.”
Connexions does identify the broad principles that guide its decisions about which kinds of materials to select for inclusion in the Connexions Library. As a rule, documents written from a Leninist

Leninism

In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...

, Trotskyist

Trotskyism

Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...

, or post-modernist perspective are not included.
Connexions’ principles include a strong commitment to civil liberties, human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press

Freedom of the press

Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...

, secularism

Secularism

Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...

, and democratic principles. Connexions declares itself opposed to censorship

Censorship

thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

 and to all forms of discrimination and oppression based on gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or race.

Theology of Connexions

Connexions is a secular project unaffiliated with any religion, but church-based social activists played an important role in founding and developing the project, and funding through its early years came from church bodies in Canada and abroad, including the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, the Presbyterian Church of Canada, various Roman Catholic dioceses and religious orders, and the World Council of Churches. The work of Connexions inspired a number of individuals affiliated with the Canadian Theological Reflection Project to publish a theological reflection on the meaning of Connexions under the title A Theology of Connexions which was circulated among church bodies internationally. It observed that "Connexions has become something of a crossroads, a meeting place–a place where stories get told. On the page of Connexions, one hears the voices of the powerless and the abused, the disabled, prisoners, the unemployed, the underemployed, skid row residents, the poor, the psychiatric patients, Third World peoples, immigrants, workers, older persons, women, native peoples, etc. Connexions realizes that the stories of the poor and oppressed differ radically from those of the typical Canadian as portrayed in mainstream culture."

International internship program

Connexions runs a social justice internship program that receives intern

Intern

Internship is a system of onthejob training for white-collar jobs, similar to an apprenticeship. Interns are usually college or university students, but they can also be high school students or post graduate adults seeking skills for a new career. They may also be as young as middle school or in...

s and volunteers from many different countries. Interns work on developing the electronic archive, scanning documents and images, writing descriptions, and marketing. Connexions is in the process of translating its controlled-vocabulary search terms into French, Spanish, and German, and is looking for more volunteers to help with this.