Susan%20Haigh

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Toward a coherent digital information environment
in Canada Limping, lurching and occasionally
leaping

• Susan Haigh
• Digital Library of Canada Task Force
• For JISC/CNI, June 2002

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Overview

• What would be ideal?
• What do we have?
• What dont we have?
• What might we do next?

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The Ideal

1. Robust funding
2. Coordinating body
3. Range of unique content
4. Jurisdictional content
5. Coherent access

1. Commitment to long-term access
2. Commitment to cooperate
3. Some experts
4. Some pragmatic decision-makers
5. Innovation

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Funding

• Canadian Content Online Program (Canadian
  Heritage)
• Canadas Digital Collections Aboriginal Digital
  Collections (Industry Canada)
• CANARIE (Industry Canada)
• Canada Foundation for Innovation
• Various provincial programs

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Libraries

• Academic and public libraries under provincial
  jurisdiction
• No provincial library system
• Two (or three) national libraries
• National Library and National Archives
  increasingly joined up
• No JISC, UKOLN, Mellon Foundation, Digital
  Library Federation, etc.

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Library Coordination

• National associations for directors of
• research libraries
• large urban public libraries
• provincial and territorial libraries
• Numerous regional networks
• Numerous consortia
• Canadian Initiative on Digital Libraries

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Major Digitization Projects

• Early Canadiana Online
• pre-1901 books government documents (CIHM)
• Our Roots
• local and regional histories (5 universities,
  CIDL, National Library)
• Peels Prairie Provinces
• Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba imprints (4
  universities)

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Major Digitization Projects (contd.)

• The Virtual Gramophone
• 78-rpm recordings (NLC)
• Sheet Music from Canadas Past
• sheet music 1800-1921 (NLC)
• Canadian Directories
• Pre-1901 city, county, provincial Canada
  directories (NLC CIHM)
• 1901 Census (National Archives)
• Paper of Record
• growing corpus of historical newspapers (ProQuest
  Micromedia/Cold North Wind)

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Born digital

• Electronic collection of Canadiana
• Considering broader archiving responsibilities
• E-theses
• Scholarly e-publishing

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Licensing of Digital Content

• Canadian National Site Licensing Project (CNSLP)
• The Alberta Library
• The Ontario Digital Library
• Quebec Research Digital Library (proposed)

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Alberta and Quebec Provincial Digitization
Models

• Alberta digitizing
• newspapers
• local histories
• folklore collections
• historical imprints
• royal commissions
• aerial photographs
• statutes, bills and gazettes
• art

• Quebec digitizing
• posters
• maps and plans
• postcards
• sound recordings
• Quebec-imprint books
• sheet music
• images from historical periodicals
• prints

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Aggregated Access

• AMICUS national union catalogue
• 25 million bibliographic records 1300 libraries
• Images Canada
• DC metadata gateway to image collections
• Artefacts Canada
• Museum objects
• Cdn. Archival Information Network
• Archival collections
• Inventory of Canadian Digital Initiatives
• Digitized collections, exhibitions, reference
  works
• CultureCanada.gc.ca

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Digital Preservation

• No national strategy yet
• National consultations this fall
• digital newspapers
• interoperability and preservation issues
• National Library considering
• Preservation state of its own e-collections
• Access and preservation responsibilities for
  formalized decentralized repositories

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The Ideal

1. Robust funding
2. Coordinating body
3. Range of unique content
4. Jurisdictional content
5. Coherent access

1. Commitment to long-term access
2. Commitment to cooperate
3. Some experts
4. Some pragmatic decision-makers
5. Innovation

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Some strategies for Canada

• 1.  Learn from international research
• 2.  Adopt/adapt the best models
• 3.  Define minimal national standards
• 4.  Provide national access services
• 5.  Foster cooperation to build momentum
• 6.  Remind projects funders of national
  responsibilities
• 7.  Brand good resources as part of a national
  whole

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Next up?

• Digital newspapers strategy
• National e-theses program
• Increased interoperability
• images
• e-prints
• Texts
• Digital preservation/national digital archive
  strategy

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Toward a national whole

• A more coherent patchwork of Canadian digital
  content
• National collections
• Brought together in sensible aggregation services
• Increased collaboration Canada-wide

National provincial institutional cooperation
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• nlc-bnc.ca
• Susan Haigh
• Manager, Program Development
• Digital Library of Canada Task Force
• National Library of Canada
• susan.haigh_at_nlc-bnc.ca