google book search notification at Art & Architecture library, Duderstadt Center by Timothy Vollmer (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/42Ls8i

google book search notification at Art & Architecture library, Duderstadt Center by Timothy Vollmer (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/42Ls8i

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Canada’s National Digitization Plan Leaves Virtual Shelves Empty

Imagine going to your local library in search of Canadian books. You wander through the stacks but are surprised to find most shelves barren with the exception of books that are over a hundred years old. This sounds more like an abandoned library than one serving the needs of its patrons, yet it is roughly what a recently released Canadian National Heritage Digitization Strategy envisions.

Led by Library and Archives Canada and endorsed by Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly, the strategy acknowledges that digital technologies make it possible “for memory institutions to provide immediate access to their holdings to an almost limitless audience.”

Yet it stops strangely short of trying to do just that.

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that rather than establishing a bold objective as has been the hallmark of recent Liberal government policy initiatives, the strategy sets as its 10-year goal the digitization of 90 per cent of all published heritage dating from before 1917 along with 50 per cent of all monographs published before 1940. It also hopes to cover all scientific journals published by Canadian universities before 2000, selected sound recordings, and all historical maps.

The strategy points to similar initiatives in other countries, but the Canadian targets pale by comparison. For example, the Netherlands plans to digitize 90 per cent of all books published in that country by 2018 along with many newspapers and magazines that pre-date 1940.

Canada’s inability to adopt a cohesive national digitization strategy has been an ongoing source of frustration and the subject of multiple studies which concluded that the country is falling behind. While there have been no shortage of pilot projects and useful initiatives from university libraries, Canada has thus far failed to articulate an ambitious, national digitization vision.

Financial and legal constraints are typically identified as two of the biggest barriers to ensuring universal digital access to Canadian heritage. Major digitization initiatives are certainly costly, but experience elsewhere shows that a government-led initiative that brings together public and private resources is possible with the right champion.

Digitization initiatives in other countries also demonstrate that the legal challenges are frequently overstated. For example, U.S. courts have ruled that massive digitization programs such as those undertaken by Google qualify as fair use. This means that millions of books can be freely digitized without fear of copyright infringement, though full access is limited to public domain works (where the copyright has expired) and licensed materials where the copyright owner has granted permission. Partial access may be granted consistent with fair use.

Canadian law features fair dealing rather than fair use, but a similar approach could be adopted. While the new Canadian strategy is largely limited to public domain works that can be digitized and made available without the need for permission or licences, the Supreme Court of Canada’s interpretation of the law lends itself to a more ambitious digitization program in which all Canadian works are converted into digital format for research, study and education purposes.

All public domain works – which could reasonably be estimated to include anything published before 1940 – could be made immediately accessible in full text. Moreover, the government could launch a crowdsourcing initiative where Canadians identify additional public domain works of authors who died more than 50 years ago. This would include many books published in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s.

For the remaining works, fair dealing would permit a portion of the work be made available without the need for further permission. For full text, authors could be given the opportunity to specify how, if at all, their works should be accessible.

With Canada set to celebrate its 150th birthday next year, now is the ideal time to give ourselves a birthday gift that will keep giving for years to come. A national digitization strategy is long overdue and starts with a government committed to a bold vision of making Canada’s heritage digitally accessible to all.

8 Comments

  1. I’m curious, have they looked at the digitization being done by the Distributed Proofreaders Canada (http://www.pgdpcanada.net) and the freely available public domain collections of both Faded Page (www.fadedpage.com) and Project Gutenberg Canada (http://www.gutenberg.ca/).

    The digitization of those older works in the public domain has been going on for quite some time.

  2. I’m happy to see the mention of Project Gutenberg Canada!

    However, PGC is really a boutique site: we provide selected titles we think will be of interest to Canadians. A comprehensive collection really does require stable, long-term support. The Government of Canada would be the ideal sponsor of such an initiative.

    The Internet Archive, based in the US, can serve as an example:

    https://archive.org/

    It has many Canadian works, but is burdened by the US’s tyrannical copyright extensions: works from after 1922 are generally under copyright and therefore not available.

    The Bibliothèque nationale de France offers Gallica, a fine digital library:

    http://gallica.bnf.fr/

    Library and Archives Canada are in an ideal position to launch a parallel collection for Canada.

    I personally would welcome a Canadian digital library sponsored by our government. For one thing, the HTML/EPUB/Text ebooks we provide are created from printed editions, which are often hard to find. If a government-sponsored site offered scans of printed editions, this would help us enormously.

    As Michael Geist suggests, if work started today a national digital library could certainly be launched next year. I cannot imagine a better way of celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday.

    Dr. Mark Akrigg
    Founder, Project Gutenberg Canada
    http://gutenberg.ca/

  3. Clark Savage says:

    I feel it is paramount that Library and Archives Canada has a modern and functional web presence to showcase whatever they digitize. Though their strategy may be woefully underwhelming, whatever they do digitize will need proper web support for users to find the content in the first place.

    Searching their catalogue in recent years has proved difficult.

  4. Library and Archives Canada are in an ideal position to launch a parallel collection for Canada.

    I personally would welcome a Canadian digital library sponsored by our government. For one thing, the HTML/EPUB/Text ebooks we provide are created from printed editions, which are often hard to find. If a government-sponsored site offered scans of printed editions, this would help us enormously.

  5. I am proud of the way they are to preserve history.
    because of the history I think it is very important to keep. in order for future posterity can know what happened in the past

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  7. Thank you very much for such an interesting post!

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