While LAC's role is more than online databases they come to the fore in a time of COVID when physical facilities are closed.
Yesterday I pointed to 78 new serials titles added to Canadiana.ca on 25 January. The British Newspaper Archive added 136,860 digitized pages in the last 7 days. The National Library of Scotland added over 2,800 early maps of Scotland in 6-months, FreeBMD added 347,757 new entries in the latest monthly update
What has LAC achieved? The past two months have seen nine posts on the LAC news page.
The latest was about the acquisition of a book. There's a notice about the suspension of copy service and publicity for a long-running travelling LAC exhibit being shown in Alberta.
Those are January posts.
In December, of the six posts, three were about service point changes, two on facility development and one on a new Co-Lab challenge.
Going back a year I could find no news item which mentioned any addition to LAC online content.
Some LAC content goes online via Canadiana.ca's Héritage collection. They inform digitization services at LAC are currently suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Until their services resume, new materials will not be added to the Héritage collection.
There's no question that managing through the pandemic is challenging. Challenge is what management is about, one that's been well met many times in LAC's past.
If other peer organizations can continue digitization operations and making additional material available online what's been lacking at LAC?
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What seems to be lacking is the will to make its collection widely available. I had hoped that once Dr. Caron departed, the digitization program would come into flower, and Library and Archives Canada could once again be "stewards of the national documentary heritage." Despite programs such as Co-Lab, there does seem a lack of continued interest in putting important collections on-line. I have spent many hours photographing documents for research use with the result that we still have a lot of research material available at home during this drought. It must be very difficult for those trying to start work on a research project.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth Vincent
LAC is and always has been the last place I go to look for something. I like it when I find something I am looking for, but those instances are few and far between.
ReplyDelete