This digitisation symposium hosted by the University of British Columbia (UBC) brought together libraries, archives and museums from across Canada.
UBC: First Nations House of Learning
The keynote address was given by the National Librarian and Archivist of Canada on the first evening. This was followed by a day long symposium of guest speakers and table discussions, identifying digitisation priorities for the province and recommendations for next steps. It was a privilege to be involved in such a landmark event and to witness how far advanced Canada is on the digital path.
Table talk: colleague BC Archives
In the morning session we heard from a pan Canadian panel representing the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario each of which has developed a single search portal for it’s province bringing together the digital content. The title of the symposium “West beyond the West” referred to British Columbia’s portal.
But it was the keynote address, placing these developments in the context of the National Digitisation Strategy which was truly inspiring, clearly articulating where Canada is headed, on the digital path.
This is Ian Wilson the National Librarian and Archivist of Canada who gave the keynote. Ian heads up Library and Archives Canada (LAC) a union of the former National Library and National Archives who decided to come together, partly as a strategic response to the challenges of the digital environment, and the need to formulate a national digital strategy.
Ian Wilson, Librarian & Archivist of Canada
One of the first things LAC did was to bring together all the stakeholders in the digital environment and formulate a national strategy the centerpiece of which Ian Wilson describes, as the “Made in Canada” solution – as opposed to signing up with google which according to Wilson, their US and UK colleagues have done. What this means is that LAC have mobilised the heritage disciplines across Canada (libraries, archives, museums etc.) to collectively agree not to digitise with google because google’s business plan is not in line with Canada’s best interests – ie. a business plan of free public access supported by advertising. What if the advertising stream dries up? Ian says google can change their business plan to pay for access/pay per view.
By contrast LAC’s business plan reflects Canadian values – values found across the heritage disciplines such as stewardship of, and free public access to, publicly owned information resources.
canadiana.org
One challenge to LAC’s “Made in Canada” solution is of course funding. One solution is a public-private partnership known as “Canadiana.org” whose goal it is to digitise everything ever published in Canada as a first step, before digitising targeted areas in the unpublished realm and other digital formats. The published realm consisting of 4-5 million volumes is seen as do-able considering google successes in the US Market comprising substantially more volumes.
Because of the funding issues Canada’s largest software firm has donated it’s state of the art digital technology free of charge to Canadiana.org – to enable it to digitise the nations cultural heritage – to do it once, and to do it well.
As a final comment on the symposium I should note the frequent references to family history and the genealogical community as a key stakeholder group driving the digital agenda. In his keynote address Ian Wilson said family historians fight harder than any single group for access to public records. He used as an example the 1911 Canadian Census where they fought an email campaign – the first in history resulting in legislation being enacted giving access to a key genealogical resource. When the census was made available on the LAC website it averaged 17 downloads a second and crashed the website. LAC had similar successes with it’s shipping and war service records as Canadians discover records relating not just to their country and community but their own family history.
Brenda Smith: BC Historical Federation, Education Chair & Family History Consultant
This is Brenda Smith of the BC Historical Federation. She spoke on behalf of local and family historians and was the final symposium speaker – so the genealogists did have the last word. And a nice piece of symmetry too, as Brenda is an educator of family historians and runs her genealogy programs at the Cloverdale Library!
