Two Major Canadian Digitization Projects Merge

Today, I received a press release on the Federal libraries community discussion list about the recent merger of the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (CIHM) and the AlouetteCanada initiative under the name Canadiana.org.

CIHM (working for the past few years as Canadiana.org) is the creator of Early Canadiana Online, a digital library providing access to more than 2 and a half million pages of Canada's printed heritage from the time of the first European settlers up to the early 20th Century.

AlouetteCanada was launched by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries about 2 years ago and is an effort to digitize the collections of books and other documents held by Canadian academic research libraries.

According to the press release:

"Canadiana.org's Executive Director Magdalene Albert says, 'For 30 years, the former CIHM has been one of the leading services of its kind in the world. The expertise of its staff in researching, locating, cataloguing and digitizing Canada’s published heritage for preservation as well as discovery and use by Canadians is widely recognized'. New Co-Director Brian Bell states, 'The merger with AlouetteCanada brings with it the commitment to creating, disseminating, preserving and sustaining the Canadian memory knowledge base in digital form for the benefit of all Canadians'."

"Canadiana.org will act in concert with the Canadian Digital Information Strategy presently being developed by Library and Archives Canada."

Earlier Library Boy posts about Canadian digitization projects include:

• Digitization of Early Canadian Government Documents Continues (November 21, 2005): "The non-profit organization Canadiana.org has just received another grant from the Department of Canadian Heritage's Canadian Culture Online program to help it complete its Canada in the Making digitization project (...) Canadiana.org will be able to add a further 250,000 pages ... These will include selected Acts, Debates and Sessional papers from the Colonial period to Confederation, and from 1867 to 1900" [the description page for this project has moved]
• CALL 2007 Pre-Conference: Managing Digital Collections (May 5, 2007): "The 2007 conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries begins this weekend in Ottawa and continues until Wednesday, May 9, 2007. Today, there was a pre-conference session on Creating and Managing a Digital Collection Project: From policy to technical requirements."
• Preservation of Web-Based Government Documents in Canada (May 29, 2007): "The Canadian Association of Research Libraries recently released an April 2007 update of a report by Andrew Hubbertz entitled Collection and Preservation of Web-Based Provincial/Territorial Government Publications (...) The update provides a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction description of the current state of affairs relating to the collection and preservation of web-based government information in Canada."
• Canadian Digital Information Strategy Issued for Comments (October 31, 2007): "Over the past 2 years, LAC [Library and Archives Canada] consulted with over 200 organizations: publishing and media producers, creators, rights bodies, academics, provincial and federal officials, and heritage institutions. The strategy being proposed is based on the following vision: 'Canada's digital information assets are created, managed and preserved to ensure that a significant Canadian digital presence and record is available to present and future generations, and that Canada's position in a global digital information economy is enhanced' (...) The draft strategy document highlights a number of current digitization projects in Canada and contains an extensive bibliography on international strategies, preservation, and digitization."
• Responses to Draft Canadian Digital Information Strategy (February 16, 2008): "Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has issued the Canadian Digital Information Strategy in draft form for comment. Comments are due by Nov 23, 2007 (...) Responses from individuals and organizations have now been posted on the Library and Archives Canada website."