1 1 Susan Haigh Digital Library of Canada Task Force For JISC/CNI, June 2002 Toward a coherent digital information environment in Canada: Limping, lurching and occasionally leaping

2 Overview  What would be ideal?  What do we have?  What don’t we have?  What might we do next?

3 The Ideal 1.Robust funding 2.Coordinating body 3.Range of unique content 4.Jurisdictional content 5.Coherent access 6.Commitment to long-term access 7.Commitment to cooperate 8.Some experts 9.Some pragmatic decision-makers 10.Innovation

5 Funding  Canadian Content Online Program (Canadian Heritage)  Canada’s Digital Collections & Aboriginal Digital Collections (Industry Canada)  CANARIE (Industry Canada)  Canada Foundation for Innovation  Various provincial programs

6 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.

7 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

8 Major Digitization Projects  Early Canadiana Online pre-1901 books & government documents (CIHM)  Our Roots local and regional histories (5 universities, CIDL, National Library)  Peel’s Prairie Provinces Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba imprints (4 universities)

9 Major Digitization Projects (cont’d.)  The Virtual Gramophone 78-rpm recordings (NLC)  Sheet Music from Canada’s Past sheet music (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)

10 Born digital  Electronic collection of Canadiana  Considering broader archiving responsibilities  E-theses  Scholarly e-publishing

11 Licensing of Digital Content  Canadian National Site Licensing Project (CNSLP)  The Alberta Library  The Ontario Digital Library  Quebec Research Digital Library (proposed)

12 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

13 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

19 Digital Preservation  No national strategy yet  National consultations this fall: 1.digital newspapers 2.interoperability and preservation issues  National Library considering: Preservation state of its own e-collections Access and preservation responsibilities for formalized decentralized repositories

20 The Ideal 1.Robust funding 2.Coordinating body 3.Range of unique content 4.Jurisdictional content 5.Coherent access 6.Commitment to long-term access 7.Commitment to cooperate 8.Some experts 9.Some pragmatic decision-makers 10. Innovation

21 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

22 Next up?  Digital newspapers strategy  National e-theses program  Increased interoperability images e-prints Texts  Digital preservation/national digital archive strategy

23 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

24 nlc-bnc.ca Susan Haigh Manager, Program Development Digital Library of Canada Task Force National Library of Canada