Canadiana/CIHM and AlouetteCanada

1. Canadiana.org/CIHM and AlouetteCanada Multicultural Canada Conference Vancouver June 2006 John Teskey

2. 28 Years of Preserving & Providing Access to Canada’s Printed Heritage And now …?

3. “A nation, it seems to me, reaches cultural maturity when it seeks to gain bibliographical control of its literature …” p. 3 “All power to CIHM in its preservation and distribution programme” p. 5 Bruce Peel. November 1987 Facsimile “No scholar working in the field of early Canadian literature can fail to be grateful to the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions. … CIHM has for the last decade been quietly busy preserving for posterity and making easily accessible to researchers the written record of early Canada, the texts upon which our understanding of our past, and, therefore, of our present and future, must depend. The result is a scholarly tool of immense proportions and importance…” D.M.R. Bentley, “Keeping the Past Present: A Tribute to CIHM”, New Resources for Canadian Studies (Ottawa: CIHM, 1988), pp. 11-12.

4. Non-profit organization launched 1978 by the Canada Council Report of the Commission on Canadian Studies, entitled To Know Ourselves Report of the Consultative Group on University Research Libraries. Preserve Canada’s printed heritage and facilitate and increase its availability

5. Initial Project: 5,000 titles • By the late 1990s: 95,000 titles on 270,000 microfiche • Largest collection of its kind • More than 200 institutions lent their materials for filming

6. Subjects Pre-1900 Mono-graphs Mono-graphs 1900-1920 Annual Periodicals Gov Pubs Totals Generalities 7,136 366 358 168 5 8,033 Philosophy 7515 227 9 31 3 785 Religion 9,671 2,527 804 366 12 13,380 Soc. Sci. 17,003 5,810 930 303 1,660 25,706 Language 1,096 298 1 6 2 1,403 Nat. Sci. 2,746 1,484 33 15 9 4,287 Technology 4,199 3,841 181 266 29 8,516 The Arts 1,736 748 59 100 1 2,644 Literature 2,217 2,968 1 33 0 5,219 Can. Lit. 2,860 2,015 15 81 0 4,971 Geo.& Hist. 15,953 3,247 417 61 148 19,826 Total 65,132 29,531 2,808 1,430 1,869 94,770

7. Early Canadiana Online (ECO) www.canadiana.org • Launched at Rideau Hall in 1999 with 3,000 titles • 8 million hits; 9,000 pages daily in first year • Canada in the Making: completed with over 1.6 million pages of early official publications (2000-2006) • Currently some 4 million hits per month;

8. Web-based learning resources • Lesson Plans (2000) • Exploration, the Fur Trade and Hudson’s Bay Company (2001) • Canada in the Making, Phase I (2001) • Canada in the Making, Phase II (2002) • Canada in the Making, Phase III ( 2004) • Next Project: Early Canadian Periodicals to 1920 (2006-_____ )

9. Founding Board Members • Ramsay Cook, York University, President • Louise Dechène, Université McGill • David Esplin, University of Toronto Libraries* • Claude Gauthier, Canada Council • Jean-Cléo Godin, Université deMontréal • Ernest Ingles, Executive Director • Douglas Lochheed, Mount Allison University* • Monique Mailloux, Université Laval • Hans Möller, University of Ottawa* • Bruce Peel, University of Alberta • Malcolm Ross, Dalhousie University • Basil Stuart-Stubbs, University of B.C.* • Guy Sylvestre, National Librarian • Thomas Symons, SSHRC • Claude Thibault, AUCCC * Also member of the Consultative Group on University Research Libraries

10. Trends • Reduced or eliminated federal funding • Continued emphasis on K-12 • Increased difficulty in fundraising • Emergence of mass digitization • Digital vs. traditional (microform) preservation • Growing interest in online historical content by the general public

13. Why Now? • Google • Libraries are digitizing already • Stop the duplication • Coordinated effort for effective, long-term preservation • National recognition • Emerald Lake November 2005

14. The Promise of AlouetteCanada AlouetteCanada will bring together under one navigation and resource discovery system existing and future digital collections from public and university libraries, archives, galleries, museums, and historical societies in a rich range of multimedia, such as digitized phonograph recordings, film clips, maps, artifacts, photographs, paintings, diaries, posters, books, and public records. Canadians and the international community will be able to powerfully and easily browse, search and navigate across and drill down into AlouetteCanada’s collections. For example, a student discovers the WarMuseum’s online collection of Vimy Ridge media and reads about the battle, looks at images, and views maps of the heavily fortified seven kilometer ridge.

16. AlouetteCanada Classification and Navigation • Follows a Topic maps approach • The GPS of the information universe • Provide a framework for coordinating semantic relationships that overlay an information landscape • Combine the power of taxonomy with the flexibility and expressiveness of thesauri.

17. Topic Maps in AlouetteCanada

18. AlouetteCanada indexing Main class: History • Related terms: Canada, War Place: Canada • Related terms: History, War Event: War • Type: Event • Related terms: History, Canada Event: World War One • Broader term: War • Narrower term: Vimy Ridge Event: Vimy Ridge • Broader term: World War One • Narrower term: Soldiers Personal: Soldiers • Broader terms: War, World War One, Vimy Ridge • Narrower terms: Personal Accounts

19. Topic Navigation

20. AlouetteCanada Category Visualization tool • Displays relationships between collections and categories • Would be the end-point of a Topic Map implementation. Users would navigate to a category via many possible pathways and then “open” the category to see what collections were inside it. • Presents data regarding collections in a visual manner • Tool integrates with D.U.C.T. and generates its visual interface dynamically using XML and XSLT. • Category-collection relationships are generated using Collection-level metadata, based on the RSLP schema.

26. Committees

27. Current Action • Website to be launched soon • Metadata and technical guidelines • Canadian Heritage New Media Research and Development Expression of Interest • Call to support the Declaration • Researching funding bodies, Federal, Provincial and Private • Work with the Canadian Digital Information Strategy (LAC)