About Canadiana.org

Canadiana.org is a national membership alliance of partners governed by an active volunteer Board of Directors made up of distinguished scholars and representatives of major research libraries from across Canada, alongside partners who strongly champion access to Canadian heritage. Our pan-Canadian platform recognizes the need for many types of partners and sectors to participate in the governance and financial support of the organization and its mission. Governance will be as representative as possible of the many constituent sectors. Canadiana.org is collaborative so as to give it the flexibility to grow and the agility to respond to changing opportunities.

Background

Canada has a vibrant community of memory institutions including university, public and government libraries and archives, museums, galleries, local history societies, genealogical societies and like-minded organizations committed to Digitize, to Preserve and to the provision of Access to Canada’s cultural and scientific content online (DPA).

A strong collaborative methodology continues to evolve across Canada. Major memory institutions are busy developing strategies to collaborate at national and regional levels to share mass digitization and preservation platforms. Several digitization, preservation and facilitated access projects are already completed, underway, or planned by Canadian memory institutions.

Canadiana.org Mission

The mission of Canadiana.org states:

It is vital to have a Canadian vision to present our cultural and scientific heritage in its bilingual and multicultural variety to our citizens and to the world, and to develop a comprehensive plan to provide Canadian Society with enduring digital access to that heritage. This is the mission of Canadiana.org.

We are pan-Canadian in outlook and governance, representing the interests of many key partnering constituencies that include content creators, content holders (memory, education, science, government agencies and the private sector), and content end-users of cultural heritage and scientific resources.

Canadiana.org Principles

The Canadiana.org service principles are:

• To build an open content collaboration in which there is no requirement for the transfer of content ownership, or of rights;
• To ensure maximum public access within a framework of respect for copyright, including free and open access to public domain and public sector content;
• To reflect Canada’s fundamental values such as bilingualism, multiculturalism, inclusiveness, and equity;
• To promote internationally-recognized standards and best practices.

Canadiana.org Objectives

The Canadiana.org production objectives are to:

• Organize pan-Canadian collaboration amongst partners including but not be limited to national, provincial, regional and local public and private memory institutions involved in education, research, culture and heritage;
• Promote standards, policies and processes to enable an integrated national preservation and access network;
• Share expertise, tools and capacity;
• Consolidate delivery to realize economies of scale, to reduce cost and to convert content faster;
• Reduce duplication;
• Ensure preservation once digitized;
• Make content accessible to all;
• Develop a goals-based delivery strategy;
• Raise funds and provide grants to delivery partners to help achieve objectives.

Benefits of Collaborative Effort in Canadian Digitization, Preservation and Access (DPA)

The global economy has rapidly evolved to a knowledge economy fuelled by a growing body of academic, scientific, government and cultural content available on the Internet.

It is vital to Canada’s future as a competitive player in the global market to make the corpus of Canadian content accessible online to all Canadians including scholars, researchers, entrepreneurs, corporations and citizens.

Canadiana.org recognizes both social and economic benefits in servicing the digitization, the preservation and the provision of access to Canadian knowledge online.

The social benefits of these services will provide:

• A cornerstone of Canada’s 21st century cultural infrastructure that reflects Canada’s fundamental values of bilingualism, multiculturalism, inclusiveness, and equity;
• An essential archive for Canada;
• Unprecedented access to Canadian content;
• The promotion of Canada’s internet based knowledge economy;
• A living lab for science and technology R&D.

The economic benefits of investment will result in:

• Increased Canadian competitiveness in the global knowledge economy;
• Economic growth through investment in the Digital Industry;
• Job Creation in Canada’s Digital Infrastructure;
• Economic benefits based on program implementation scope, rate, and timelines.

Continue to Governance, Membership and Digitization, Preservation, Access for information on how you can participate in Canadiana.org.