Canadiana.org

Canadiana.org is a non-profit, registered charity established in 1978. Canadiana works with other public and private organizations (notably Library and Archives Canada) to present Canada's documentary heritage online. Canadiana supports, facilitates and coordinates initiatives to digitize Canadian historical materials, and maintains and provides electronic access to those materials through a number of online portals.

Canadiana is a membership alliance governed by a volunteer Board of Directors consisting of scholars and representatives of major memory institutions from across Canada. The organization is “pan-Canadian in outlook and governance” and aims to represent the interests of many stakeholder constituencies. Those constituencies include organizations that rely upon Canadiana to maintain and make available digital copies of heritage materials that said organizations hold in physical form; researchers and others who access those digital copies through open access and subscription databases; and the academic and research libraries, and public and government libraries, archives, museums, and other organizations that subscribe to those databases on behalf of users.

The Canadiana “TDR” is one service offered by the Canadiana organization. In addition, Canadiana acts as a publisher for reformatted analog-to-digital content of interest to its subscribers. Digital content is produced and made accessible through their digitization services, and discovery and access platforms. Not all of the content published by Canadiana is included in the Canadiana “TDR,” and such content is not within the scope of this audit.

The purpose of the Canadiana “TDR” is to serve the digital preservation and access needs of its stakeholders. It does this by providing the following services:

1. Preserving digitized content produced, owned by or of interest to its stakeholders; and

2. Providing long-term access to the preserved content to user communities represented by its stakeholders, based on terms of access and funding models agreed to by the stakeholders.

Some TDR content is produced, stored and disseminated by Canadiana on behalf of other organizations, such as materials from Library and Archives Canada digitized by Canadiana and distributed through Early Canadiana Online. Other content is contributed by client organizations like the Short Grass Public Library System (SGPLC), whose The Brooks Bulletin is stored on their behalf.

Center for Research Libraries

The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) is an international consortium of university, college, and independent research libraries. CRL supports advanced research and learning in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences by ensuring the survival and accessibility of source materials vital to those disciplines. To enable its community to accelerate the shift to electronic-only resources in a careful and responsible manner, CRL both maintains shared physical collections of materials and evaluates digital repositories of interest to its community.

CRL analysis of Canadiana documentation and operations was undertaken by Marie Waltz and other CRL staff. Additional technical support for the site visit and the assessment of Canadiana repository systems and architecture was provided by James A. Jacobs, Librarian Emeritus, University of California San Diego. Mr. Jacobs has more than 20 years’ experience working with digital information, digital services, and digital library collections.

To guide this audit CRL enlisted a panel of advisors representing the various sectors of Canadiana’s designated community. The Certification Advisory Panel includes leaders in digital resources, preservation, and digital information technology, and is so constituted as to ensure that the certification process addresses the interests of the Canadiana designated community.

The members of the CRL Canadiana Certification Advisory Panel were: