Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has announced that it will put most of its services online within the next seven years. The initiative is expected to transform the institution into a fully engaged digital organisation.
As part of an overall strategy designed to provide more online public access, LAC will take a multi-faceted approach - adapting services and transforming business processes to make access easier, and increasing online content by switching to digital formats.
LAC sends out about 750,000 photocopies each year in response to client requests. Clients are now requesting digital copies. To better respond to these changing client needs and to contribute to the preservation of the country's documentary heritage, clients will now be able to order digital copies of documents found in LAC's collection. Paper copies will be phased out by April 2011. Digitised documents will be made available through LAC's website for repeat requests. By 2012, LAC will start responding to Access to Information requests by producing digitised records for clients.
The National Union Catalogue provides Canadians with digital access to information about items in library catalogues from across Canada. In order to make this information easier to access and share, LAC is working with contributing libraries to identify common digital search tools. By 2011, Canadians will be able to access the entire contents of the National Union Catalogue, representing more than 30 million entries, using popular online search engines.
Electronic theses and dissertations are seen to offer good access to academic research. The Theses Canada Portal at LAC looks to offer one-stop shopping for this area of LAC's collection, but many universities still provide their documents in paper form. By 2014, LAC will only accept theses and dissertations from Canadian universities in electronic form.
Also, over the next year, LAC will double the volume of its online content, mounting millions of genealogy images on its website in partnership with Ancestry.ca. It is also exploring ways to reuse images requested by clients in order to provide a broad range of digital content from the collection online.
By 2017, LAC will therefore acquire and preserve all borne digital federal archival records electronically, making them easier to find and use. Also, it will preserve digital material through a trusted digital repository that meets international standards. This will purportedly safeguard Canada's digital heritage and ensure that it remains accessible to Canadians in the long term, even after the technology which created it has changed.
LAC will introduce these and other changes gradually and at no additional cost by working collaboratively with other memory institutions, government departments, universities, researchers and the publishing community.
Search for more Digital Asset Management Platforms
To access our daily STM news feed through your iPhone, iPad, or other smartphones, please visit www.myscoope.com for a mobile friendly reading experience.
