6. Building Canada's Scientific Infostructure

In the strategic planning consultations, NRC-CISTI's stakeholders clearly voiced their vision for universal, seamless, and permanent access to STM information for Canadians through a national STM information network — Canada's scientific "infostructure." This infostructure⁸ will provide all Canadians, regardless of their geographic location, the sector they work in, or the size of their organization, with access to the world's STM information. Intelligent tools and access to expert advice will be provided to help them extract value from the information.

Proposed Model for Canada's scientific infostructure

6.1 Working together: building partnerships, networks, and strategic alliances

Success in today's information world increasingly depends on collaboration, partnerships, and strategic alliances. By working together, organizations can realize economies of scale, improve service levels, and maximize the benefits derived from investments in information resources, technology, and expertise.

Within the Canadian context, there are numerous organizations that contribute to ensuring that STM information is managed and delivered to users. Among these organizations there are initiatives in place as described below. Exciting opportunities exist to link these initiatives to create Canada's scientific infostructure and provide universal, seamless, and permanent access for Canadians in all sectors.

Academic libraries

The Canadian academic library community has a culture and a long history of cooperation and partnership. This is seen in the formation of national and regional consortia in Canada that include the majority of university libraries. NRC-CISTI works closely with these consortia. However, the nature of this relationship has changed with the shift from the print environment to the electronic one.

In the print environment NRC-CISTI's document delivery services were an important point of access for university libraries to publications that they did not hold. In the electronic environment, the consortia have taken advantage of the opportunities that have opened up to provide enhanced electronic access for their clients directly. They have also found new ways to share resources through shared licensing, acquisitions, services, and infrastructure development.

At the national level, a key achievement of the university library community is the incorporation of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN). The CRKN grew out of the Canadian National Site Licensing Project (CNSLP), which was jointly funded by the universities and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The CRKN, which is funded by the universities, provides desktop access for Canadian academics to a wide variety of electronic STM journals and key research databases through nationally negotiated licenses with the publishers. This initiative is a true Canadian success story in providing improved access to STM information resources for the academic sector.

At the regional level, the academic library consortia have worked to improve access to electronic information resources for their clients. One example of a regional initiative is the Ontario Scholar's Portal implemented by the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). This web-based portal provides a single point of electronic access for students and researchers at Ontario universities to published journals in a broad range of disciplines, as well as to databases and other electronic services.

The Conférence des recteurs et des principaux des universités du Québec (CREPUQ) has undertaken a study to begin developing the Bibliothèque de recherche virtuelle du Québec (BRVQ). The Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL) has developed the Virtual Western Canadian Library (VWCUL) and the Council of Atlantic University Libraries (CAUL) is interested in developing similar systems for its region.

Within Canada, no organization has taken a national perspective on how to maximize the value and benefits of these investments in infrastructure and content. NRC-CISTI will work in partnership with the academic library consortia to extent universal access to STM information for Canadian academic researchers in all regions, based on the proposed model for Canada's scientific infostructure.

Federal and provincial government libraries

In seeking to deliver value to Canadians, federal and provincial government libraries share common goals. The Federal Science eLibrary is an initiative of the Strategic Alliance of Federal Science and Technology Libraries, an alliance of the libraries of the federal science-based departments and agencies, of which NRC-CISTI is a member.

The Federal Science eLibrary would provide federal government researchers with seamless and equitable access to electronic journals in the fields of science, technology, and medicine. The eLibrary would do for federal researchers what the CRKN does for academics. The business case and feasibility study have been completed and the initiative is awaiting a decision on funding from the government.

In cooperation with the Strategic Alliance of Federal Science and Technology Libraries and other government libraries, NRC-CISTI will work towards the realization of the Federal Science eLibrary and the development of a flexible partnership model to facilitate improved access to STM information for all federal and provincial government workers as part of Canada's scientific infostructure.

Under its new mandate, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is poised to take a greater role in information management for the Federal government. NRC-CISTI will work with LAC as a valued partner.

Health Sciences Information community

NRC-CISTI works closely with the health sciences information community through the NRC-CISTI Committee for Health Sciences Information. This community sees an important role for NRC-CISTI, in partnership with Health Canada and the Canadian Health Network, to build in national network of libraries for health. This Canadian-focused network would provide access to a variety of health-related resources, including medical journals, medical alerts, directories, drug information, consumer health, and other aspects of health information.

NRC-CISTI will work with the health sciences information community to seek a solution to providing affordable and universal access to medical and health-related information for Canadians.

Scientific societies

Canadian scientific societies are important components of the scientific publishing system in Canada. Many are small and struggle to find the resources and expertise to maintain their publications. The shift to electronic publishing is particularly difficult for them. Through the NRC Research Press, access to electronic publishing services and expertise has made it possible for a number of Canadian societies to publish electronic versions of their journals on the web.

As Canada's leader in STM publishing, NRC-CISTI will support research communication by offering leading-edge publication services, systems, and applications to enable researchers to communicate their research results and collaborate with colleagues around the world quickly and easily.

Other Canadian partners

Canada's scientific infostructure will expand to include other partners who want to make their information resources more widely available to Canadians. Potential partners could come from the industry sector, including sector-specific institutes and associations. NRC research institutes are also potential partners.

International STM information organizations

NRC-CISTI currently has resource partnerships that provide access for Canadians to the information resources of other major S&T libraries around the world.⁹ These mutually beneficial partnerships are key to ensuring that Canadians have affordable access to the world's STM literature.

NRC-CISTI will expand its current international resource partnerships and develop new ones to ensure continuing Canadian access to the world's STM information resources.

6.2 NRC-CISTI's contribution to Canada's scientific infostructure

NRC-CISTI will make two key contributions to Canada's scientific infostructure: coordination and technical infrastructure.

The key to success in building Canada's scientific infostructure will be developing close cooperation and coordination among STM information organizations across the country. As Canada's national science library and largest scientific publisher, NRC-CISTI is uniquely positioned to lead in making this happen. NRC-CISTI will work with other STM information organizations to develop a partnership model that is viable and economically sustainable. When it is warranted, a coordinating office will be established to oversee the shared governance of Canada's scientific infostructure.

To support Canada's scientific infostructure, NRC-CISTI will build the necessary common technical infrastructure with its partners. This infrastructure will provide the means to permanently load digital journals and other digital content, build bilingual interfaces for seamless desktop access, and offer discovery tools that facilitate use. Partners will be invited to participate in the development of the infrastructure and to use it to share their collections.

Canadians have made significant investments in STM information resources and infrastructure across the country. By linking these initiatives and developing the supporting infrastructure, maximum benefit will be derived to support research and innovation in Canada.

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⁸The term "infostructure" refers to a system that encompasses information and technology infrastructure.
⁹British Library Document Supply Centre, the Institut de l'information scientifique et technique (INIST) of France, the Korea Institute for Science and Technology Information (KISTI), the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC), Sunmedia of Japan, and the Science and Technology Information Center (STIC) in Chinese Taipei.