26 May 2018

More on LAC and Government of Canada Survey of Heritage Institutions: 2017 report

As a follow-on to the earlier post 16% of Canada's physical artefacts and records converted to digital I sought clarifications from Heritage Canada. Here are the abbreviated responses.

Q. In which province, or provinces are responses for LAC included?
A. Data for (all of) LAC was captured under the province of Ontario, as the address of LAC headquarters are located at 395 Wellington St, Ottawa, ON K1A 0N4.

Comment: The survey is not representative of the actual situation with the allocation to Ontario of the large component of LAC resources expended and holdings associated with facilities in Gatineau, Quebec.

Q. As libraries are not mentioned as heritage institutions do responses from LAC exclude the library component of the organization, especially regarding the statistics under Artefacts and records and Digitization of artefacts and records?
A. For LAC, the survey has captured the archival (primary) and library (secondary) functions, which means that all of the artefacts and digitization of artefacts would have been included.

Comment: The report should make clear that library (secondary) functions are included. Some libraries have archival functions as secondary but hold much the same type of material as those for which the library function is secondary. As galleries, libraries, archives and museums are increasingly working together the separation is this report is archaic.

Thanks to Ken Amaral of Heritage Canada for the clear responses to the questions.

No comments: