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Volume 2, Number 4, July-August 2006 
Message from Ian E. Wilson
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 Ian E. Wilson Librarian and Archivist of Canada Source |
There is broad consensus across Canada on the need to ensure that Canada's digital assets are created, protected, preserved and made accessible now and in the future. A recent survey found that 96% of Canadians feel it is important that Library and Archives Canada (LAC) stay current with the latest technology to safely preserve Canada's documentary history in digital formats; 93% feel it is important that we make our collection and services accessible on the Web as much as possible.1
LAC has assumed a leadership role in developing a national strategy to manage digital information, in collaboration with industry, government, heritage institutions, universities, research organizations and the pan-Canadian network of libraries and archives. We recently completed four thematic meetings across the country as part of this collaborative development process, and an invitational national summit will be held in late fall, culminating in a strategy.
The meetings highlighted the need for a holistic approach to strengthen Canada's capacity to create, manage and use digital information, thereby ensuring our position within the emerging global knowledge economy. Participants discussed how to increase the digitization of Canadian materials to a truly national scale, so that individuals seeking information online can draw from our nation's past intellectual output. They addressed how to ensure that both commercial and non-commercial digital information become as widely available, as flexible for current and future uses, and as enduring as possible. And they discussed the need to build a robust network of digital information repositories, each capable of preserving access to its content over time.
These meetings were a first step in exploring a complex set of new opportunities and challenges: opportunities to embrace quickly, and challenges to address together, strategically. More information about the themes and outcomes of the meetings is posted on the LAC website at www.collectionscanada.ca/cdis/index-e.html.
1 The LAC-sponsored questions were included in the Canadian Ipsos-Reid Omnibus Express, a survey of a nationally representative cross-section of Canadian adults, providing an overall margin of error of ±3.1 percentage points and statistically reliable results in each major region of the country. The survey was conducted from May 31 to June 2, 2005.