Canadiana.org/CIHM and

AlouetteCanada

Multicultural Canada ConferenceVancouver June 2006

John Teskey

28 Years of Preserving & Providing Access to Canada’s Printed

Heritage

And now …?

“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. 5Bruce 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.

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

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

94,7701,8691,4302,80829,53165,132Total

19,826148614173,24715,953Geo.& Hist.

4,971081152,0152,860Can. Lit.

5,21903312,9682,217Literature

2,6441100597481,736The Arts

8,516292661813,8414,199Technology

4,287915331,4842,746Nat. Sci.

1,4032612981,096Language

25,7061,6603039305,81017,003Soc. Sci.

13,380123668042,5279,671Religion

78533192277515Philosophy

8,03351683583667,136Generalities

TotalsGov PubsPeriodicalsAnnualMono-graphs 1900-1920

Pre-1900 Mono-graphs

Subjects

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;

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-_____ )

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

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

Why Now?

• Google

• Libraries are digitizing already– Stop the duplication– Coordinated effort for effective, long-term

preservation

• National recognition

• Emerald Lake November 2005

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.

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.

Topic Maps in AlouetteCanada

Taxonom y and Associations

H is to ryT yp e : LC

R T : C an a d a ,W a r

C a na daT yp e : P la ceR T : H is to ry,

W a r

V im y R id geT yp e : E ve n t

B T : W o rld W a r O ne

S o ld ie rsT yp e : P e rso n a l

B T : W o rld W a r O ne

W o rld W a r O neT yp e : E ve n t

B T : W arP re ce ed s : W o rld W a r T w o

W o rld W a r T w oT yp e : E ve n t

B T : W arS u ccee d s : W o rld W ar O ne

W a rT yp e : E ve n tR T : H is to ry,

C a na da

2 0 th C en tu ryT yp e : T im e

R T :

AlouetteCanada indexingMain 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

Topic Navigation

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.

Committees

Funding Strategy

Committee

Charter Projects

Committee

Communi-cations and Marketing Committee

Assessment and

Outcomes Committee

Technical Committee

Steering

Committee

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)