Details of the project, revealed late Tuesday by the Ottawa Citizen, would see Library and Archives hand over millions of publicly-owned books and documents to Canadiana.com which, in exchange, will get a 10-year exclusive licence to sell it in sophisticated digital format.
Critics say the deal, which had been shrouded in secrecy, amounts to selling back to Canadians what they already own.
LAC says the so-called Heritage Project, to be launched with an initial $2 million from Canadian university libraries, is misunderstood.
Until Tuesday both sides were refusing to discuss the deal publicly and held everyone in the know under non-disclosure agreements — gag orders — pending an official announcement planned for Friday.
It is now unclear when the official announcement will happen but it won’t be Friday.
Archivists, currently holding a convention in Winnipeg, are angry that they weren’t consulted when the deal was being negotiated and say the secret nature of the deal makes it impossible to know whether it’s good for Canadians.
And in the House of Commons Wednesday, NDP heritage critics Andrew Cash and Pierre Nantel again challenged Heritage Minister James Moore, who agreed that Canadians shouldn’t pay to access their own archives.
But Moore, who apparently wasn’t told about the LAC-Canadiana project until Tuesday, defended the institution’s digitization policy and accused the opposition of being against outsourcing digitization because it meant fewer union jobs at LAC.
“Our job is to ensure that Canadians have access to Library and Archives Canada when and where they live, and in the digital format that they want it to be in,” he said. “It is about serving Canadians, not serving the unions. The digitization of our archives is important for all Canadians, so Canadians can better understand their personal and our collective history.”
In an interview Wednesday, LAC’s director general of content access, Fabien Lengellé, said Canadians would have free access to the basic images during their decade of ‘privatization’ and for $10 a month will be able to access the full, sophisticated metadata version from their home computers.
Between the Canadiana deal and other partnerships, LAC will have 100 million pages digitized, he added.
“This is by far the biggest digitization effort we have ever undertaken,” said Lengellé. “It’s about access — about putting Canadians in front of what they want to read as easily and as fast as we possibly can. Nothing that was free before will be for fee.”
Members of the public will also be able to access the Canadiana portal for free at university libraries, he said.
It’s unclear how that will work given that most, if not all, university libraries are for the exclusive use of students, faculty and those with connections to the university. Others typically pay hefty fees.
The decision to keep the deal under wraps was Canadiana’s, added Lengellé.
“I’ve never asked anybody to sign anything,” he said.
Lengellé referred specific questions about that, and the long-term financial sustainability of the project, to a Canadiana official who did not respond to a request for an interview.
But another Canadiana spokesperson earlier Wednesday said they had been told not to speak publicly pending a separate, unrelated government announcement.
Chairman of the Canadian Council of Archivists Lara Wilson said Wednesday that news of the deal had come as a complete surprise to the 800 archival institutions her organization represents.
“I feel sad about it,” she said. “The Canadian archival community wasn’t aware of this project. Archivists believe in open access to our documentary heritage. We believe that digitization is key to providing more access — not putting it behind a paywall. Even if the paywall is for 10 years, it still not open access.”
Wilson figures LAC management shut the archivist community out because of its public criticism when LAC controversially cancelled the $1.7 million National Archival Development Program, which aided small community archives and which Heritage Minister Moore has now indicated could be reinstated.
“We weren’t quiet about that,” she said. “I guess they saw us as a difficult group to work with.”
Vancouver archivist Myron Groover said there is nothing inherently wrong with LAC partnering with a private organization but he slammed the secrecy surrounding the process.
“LAC are guardians of a public good,” he said. “How do Canadians know that this is really the best option when there has been no transparency and we don’t know how the deal has been reached? This hasn’t even been shared with the overwhelming number of librarians or any archivists that I can see.
“So it isn’t clear what other options were considered or why they were rejected,” he added. “The idea was to present this to the public as a fait accompli — ‘this is the best possible option we have come up with and here is some snappy marketing to tell you why this is a good idea.’ I don’t think all private entities are malicious or unhelpful but if these decisions are going to be made, they need to be made in a spirit of openness, transparency and consultation, so that citizens and professionals can be assured it represents the best choice.”
Original Article
Source: ottawacitizen.com
Author: Chris Cobb
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