Canadian Digital Information Strategy

The Digital Strategy

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Challenge 1 - Strengthening content

Long-term outcome: Canada's information assets and accumulated knowledge are in digital form.

While there are few national borders in the digital world, a strong digital presence is vital to Canada's economic growth and its participation, contribution, and ability to compete in the global knowledge-based economy. The Internet is now a leading resource for learning, research, business, services, and recreational activities. Canadian content should be visible there, reflecting and contributing our expertise and creativity to an increasingly online world. To position our content globally, and better exploit it domestically, we must address issues and gaps in digital conversion, digital production, and digital information management.

The Strategy envisions a rich and coherent body of Canadian digital content that reflects the Canadian experience and meets the needs of an increasingly online body of Canadian users. Strengthening Canadian digital content will require a conscious and collaborative effort from all sectors to convert analogue content held in repositories across the country, together with a similar effort to strengthen the creation of enduring high-quality 'born digital' information.

Goals

• To realize the systematic development and management of a vast body of high-quality Canadian cultural, scientific and government digital information for dissemination, access and use.
• To promote the development of strong digital content industries in Canada.

1. Strengthening content - Objectives

Digitization converts content that exists in print or analogue form to digital formats, and usually results in the content being made available online. This broadens its accessibility and responds to a new reality: if information is not online, it is not visible; and, to a growing portion of the population, particularly the 'Net generation', that means it simply does not exist.

In Canada, we already have several key ingredients for a successful digitization effort: keen and committed institutions at all levels; some government support; and considerable production experience, some of it collaborative. But other key ingredients are missing. We have arrived at our current state of digitization in an ad hoc fashion with short-term funding that is often focused on selective interpretive content. We have done so without the benefit of minimal standards to ensure product reliability, interoperability and longevity; and without tools, best practices, and guidance to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. Our approach has been project-based, and many of the resulting resources fall short on completeness, public profile, and end-user focus. After about ten years of effort, Canadian pre-digital content has only been converted in a patchwork of online exhibitions and partial collections, and the latter are often in databases that lack interoperability. Canada does not have a comprehensive national collection of any particular type of digitized material, nor is there overall coherence in the corpus of all Canadian material that has been digitized so far.

Although there has been significant private sector investment in the conversion of legal, news, and business information, when compared to many other countries, our public and private investment in digitization appears to be lagging.¹⁷ As a result, the sum of digital resources that we make accessible to our own citizens and to the world is comparatively weak.

Digitization is usually undertaken with the goal to make information more accessible, but sometimes it can also serve a preservation purpose. In the case of some analogue material, such as nitrate film, conversion should be undertaken before the film has deteriorated beyond salvage. Older audio and video recordings, some of which carry unique content such as folklore or oral histories, are becoming inaccessible because of format obsolescence or material degradation.

The ability to preserve digitized content ties in closely to the adoption of sound digitization practices that will allow the resulting digital works to remain accessible over time. Digital preservation requires a commitment to high-quality processes during digitization (e.g. standard formats, stable URLs) and to sustaining the digitized resource indefinitely in a trusted repository. Funders such as Canadian Culture Online (CCO) require that access to digitized resources be maintained for a minimum of five years. But, there has been little consideration of what will, or should, happen to the resources in the long-term.

The CDIS consultations suggested that Canada's national approach should be built upon provincial strategies, which in turn would take into account regional and local needs and priorities. This approach can be coupled with collaborative approaches across government jurisdictions and across private-public sectors. There was consensus among participants that we must dramatically ramp up the scale and scope of our digital conversion. It was also made clear that, in order for digitization to not be limited to pre-20th Century material, there must be cooperation between digitizers and rights holders, and that Canada should develop a licencing regime that will favour digitization of 'orphan works' (published works for which rights holders cannot be identified or located).

A collaborative national vision must lead to an increased-and increasingly coordinated-effort. That effort must be strategically funded from both private and public sources, and underpinned by common standards and sound guidance based on best practices. While standards tend to be more complex and costly to apply than projects (and their funders) anticipate, the good news is that among digitization projects worldwide, there is increasing consensus and consolidation on the use of certain file formats, metadata standards, and interoperability protocols. Many high quality guidance documents have been generated that could be adapted and adopted for Canada.

Digitization has matured. More than ten years' worth of international research, investment and practice has been accrued to address its challenges. Costs have come down; technologies have evolved; best practices have emerged; economies of scale have become evident; and international models exist. This maturation makes it an opportune time for Canada to define an ambitious program of digitization as other countries and groups of countries are in the process of doing. Experience has proven that our analogue content has rich value within the Canadian and global networked information environment, and we must act decisively and collectively to make it available.

Actions

Formal content producers, such as publishers and record companies, began the transition to digital production practices over 30 years ago, and it would be unusual to find a publisher today that is not using digital production practices. The commercial sector has moved rapidly to add online finding tools, digital delivery options, and to address pricing and format expectations of online consumers. Producers are finding new business models: providing free online excerpts or complete PDFs as a way of increasing hardcopy sales; licensing online collections at bundled pricing; and marketing microcontent (individual articles or songs) in addition to more packaged content (journal subscriptions or CD albums) under a range of online payment options. A few creators directly offer users a choice to download for free or to purchase, sometimes with variable pricing schemes (e.g. Sheeba www.sheeba.ca/store/). In the academic publishing world, the 'author-pays' model¹⁸ enables free access for users while allowing the producer to retain a revenue stream.

Despite progress by some, the transition to disseminating digital products is posing a significant challenge for others. In the digital environment it is easy for users to share content; and the demand for open and no-cost content along with free services is part of the Internet culture. Anyone can now publish directly to the Internet, and new approaches to marketing self-publications have even recently emerged.

At the CDIS consultations, participants from traditional publishing sectors expressed concerns about protecting revenues and ensuring that creators' rights would not be compromised in an online distribution environment. Businesses need sustainable ways of generating revenue and many creators seek to earn a livelihood from the content they create. Furthermore, many Canadian publishers will need assistance to transition their services. A study commissioned by the Association of Canadian Publishers concludes that "without additional resources, most [Canadian book publishers] will find it difficult to ramp up their skills and their corporate capacity to adapt to a rapidly changing environment and new ways of doing business."¹⁹

Commercial entities also expressed interest in increasing their use of open standards and technologies for production as a way of controlling high systems costs and potentially achieving greater visibility for their products in the networked information environment. Academic presses and other small publishers clearly see the merit in cooperative development of tools and infrastructure to support online publishing, such as those being developed by the Synergies Project.

The Strategy aims to create an environment in which both small and large, traditional and new media producers thrive.

Actions

Unlike the analogue environment, the digital information lifecycle stages of creation, use, and preservation are highly inter-dependent. Critical information about a digital resource, such as its format, the context in which it is created, and its copyright and use information are ideally identified at the time of creation so that the resource can be managed, used, and preserved appropriately in the future.

Managing the stages of the digital information lifecycle is possible through a variety of increasingly widely accepted standards and best practices. Unfortunately, in the Canadian context, we are yet to see the comprehensive application of digital information lifecycle management. For example, digital resources are often created without long-term permanence in mind.²⁰ Creators and publishers do not always take the measures required to ensure the long-term historical value of their digital works. Furthermore, because of their failure to adopt standards and best practices, creators may inadvertently produce digital works that will not be adaptable to rapid technological change and will therefore not endure.

The Strategy seeks to improve the capacity of Canadian content creators to produce high-quality, sustainable digital material. There are significant risks associated with using proprietary standards and technologies, which are very vulnerable to obsolescence; therefore, the adoption of open standards should be encouraged. The use of persistent identifiers, which point users to the authoritative and permanent version of the resource, should also be encouraged. As well, sound practice would be to assign preservation, descriptive and rights metadata at the time of creation. The broad implementation of these types of practices will enable the greatest possible usability, longevity, and portability of Canadian digital content.

Of particular concern is research data, a resource of growing importance for Canada's knowledge economy. Participants at the CDIS consultations echoed many of the issues outlined in the 2005 report of the National Consultation on Access to Scientific Research Data (NCASRD Final Report, 2005 http://ncasrd-cnadrs.scitech.gc.ca/NCASRDReport_e.pdf ). Research data must be created using open standards so that they are available, understood and reusable in the future.

Government information and data are valuable national resources that must be created and managed appropriately. Government published and unpublished information (publications and records) are central to an effective and accountable Canadian public administration. Digital records are vital to efficient decision making; to enable the Government of Canada's public service to act in a transparent manner; and to ensure that evidence of the Government's actions are preserved for the benefit and knowledge of current and future generations.

In the digital era, where government employees have the power to create and destroy information at their desktops, the appropriate creation, management and preservation of records is not guaranteed. The fragility of digital information; the absence of technological frameworks to organize and retrieve digital information at levels that meet acceptable recordkeeping, legal, and public accessibility requirements; and the uneven application of metadata, records capture systems, and directives on the creation of records-all of these factors challenge the realization of modern, efficient and competitive government at federal, provincial and municipal levels.

In all sectors, creators need access to tools that will assist them in adopting technologies, standards and practices that will facilitate information management and permanence. Some tools already exist, but these are generally domain specific. There is a need to increase the sharing of best practices within and among communities. Canadian funding agencies that invest in the creation of digital resources are well positioned to influence the adoption of technologies, standards and practices to facilitate sound information management and long-term preservation over the lifecycle of the resource. Similarly, individual organizations can develop internal policies and insist on adoption by their constituents.

Actions

Canada's population has a unique cultural, ethnic and linguistic makeup. Diversity is a fundamental characteristic of Canada and this should be reflected in our nation's digital presence. The Strategy seeks to support Canada's public policy objectives of bilingualism, multiculturalism, inclusiveness of persons with disabilities and respect for Aboriginal peoples' knowledge and heritage.

There are some initiatives underway that support this objective. For example, Multicultural Canada (www.multiculturalcanada.ca/) showcases the achievements of Canada's diverse communities, and the Cree Culture Website (www.creeculture.ca/) is a growing site dedicated to Cree culture available in Cree, English and French. Our Voices (www.ourvoices.ca/index) is a website that provides access to audio material on the history and culture of the First Nations people of Canada, and the Chinese-Canadian Genealogy website (www.vpl.ca/ccg/home.html) provides resources for people who would like to explore Chinese-Canadian history and genealogy. Project Naming (www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/inuit/index-e.html) is a collaboration between Library and Archives Canada and Inuit youth and elders to identify Inuit portrayed in LAC photographic collections, and the Kitikmeot Place Name Atlas (www.kitikmeotheritage.ca/atlas.htm) records traditional Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun place names of the region, including their pronunciation, meanings and associated oral traditions, and placing them on the map. With such projects, Canada strengthens the digital voice of its cultural communities to reflect our geographic, linguistic and cultural diversity. But much more is possible.

Participants in the CDIS consultations stressed the need to foster bilingual content, French-language content, and content in Aboriginal languages on a much more massive scale. In particular, special attention is needed to build digital production capacity among Aboriginal peoples, which in turn will encourage their participation in the knowledge economy and their engagement in preserving and promoting their cultures, languages and identities. For French-language content, the work of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) to strengthen the digitization network in Quebec and to contribute to the development of a network of national French-language digital libraries²¹ advances this objective.

Also, as an inclusive society we must facilitate the production of digital content into alternative formats, so that persons with print disabilities can access it. We need to foster adherence to accessibility standards in publishing production in order to increase the percentage of materials available to those who cannot read conventional print. The Initiative for Equitable Library Access (www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/iela/index-e.html) will coordinate activities designed to develop and cost the implementation of a nation-wide strategy to provide equitable library service to Canadians with print disabilities. Activities include the development of a trusted clearinghouse of publishers' electronic files to support the production of alternative formats.

Actions

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17. For example, the UK government allocated 30M Euros ($43.1M CDN) to digitization in 2006 ($.71 per person). This figure does not include additional investment from Google and Microsoft in digitization of Oxford University and British Library collections. While the Canadian government expended $26.8 ($.80 per person) on Canadian Content Online programs that include some content digitization, the Canadian programs do not focus on digitization but on "online engagement of Canadians with collections". The Canadian expenditure on conversion specifically is actually significantly lower than that figure, and thus lower than in the UK.

18. 'Author-pays' is a business model in which "publication is paid for by the author, the author's institution, or the research programme." It is one model being used for open access journals, as it is an alternative to the 'subscriber-pays' or 'user-pays' model in which journal production costs are supported by institutional and reader subscriptions. (Wellcome Trust. Costs and business models in scientific research publishing, 2004).

19. The Impact of Digitization on the Book Industry: www.omdc.on.ca/AssetFactory.aspx?did=5897

20. McDonald, John and Kathleen Shearer, January 2006.

21. See Le réseau francophone des bibliothèques nationales numériques http://communiques.gouv.qc.ca/gouvqc/communiques/GPQF/Mars2006/
23/c5276.html

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