National Library News November 1999 Vol. 31, no. 11

The Early Canadiana Online (ECO) Project

Early Canadiana Online / Notre mémoire en ligne is an innovative project developed jointly by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (CIHM), the National Library of Canada, the University of Toronto, Université Laval, and the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec.

This pilot project has moved selected primary historical pamphlets and texts from the shelves of libraries and archives scattered across Canada onto the Internet, where they will be accessible worldwide. Anyone who has access to a computer and a modem can now view the full text of 3 300 pre-1900 books and pamphlets, with particular emphasis on Canadian literature, Native studies, travel and exploration of Canada, the history of French Canada, and Canadian women’s history. In addition, the project will complement the electronic archive of 19th-century Quebec literature created by the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec.

Early Canadiana Online (ECO) has several research goals: to analyze the costs to libraries of providing access to early Canadian books, comparing costs for print, microfiche and digital formats; to assess usage levels for print, microfiche and digital formats, while also determining the level of user satisfaction with regard to the digital version; and to test the feasibility of providing additional historical texts online in the future.

ECO gratefully acknowledges the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Royal Bank Financial Group, Canada Millennium Partnership Program, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC), Chawkers Foundation, Imasco Limited, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canadian Heritage, Harold Crabtree Foundation, Hudson’s Bay History Foundation, Birks Family Foundation, and Jackman Foundation.

The National Library of Canada has been a partner and supporter of the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions since its inception. CIHM is a non-profit charitable institute, established in 1978 by the Canada Council to preserve and provide access to Canada’s printed heritage. CIHM, an increasingly independent enterprise, has undertaken this challenging task with the help of librarians, archivists, scholars and researchers across Canada.

The Institute has located and reformatted more than 80 000 Canadian books, periodicals, and pamphlets documenting Canada’s printed heritage. The microfiche collection is found in 38 major research libraries across Canada and in more than 40 libraries in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, India, Italy, Australia and New Zealand.

The Early Canadiana Collection is the largest single source of 350 years of Canada’s printed heritage. These publications, in danger of being lost through disintegration due to acid paper or through simple neglect, were found in 200 libraries, archives and private collections and preserved as a national collection.

Many of these rare and fragile publications had been virtually inaccessible to researchers. They are now available on microfiche through libraries that subscribe to the collection. These include the National Library of Canada, the National Archives of Canada, various university libraries, and some municipal libraries, e.g., Toronto Public Library.

In Canada alone, the collection has an estimated 100 000 - plus users each year. The libraries which subscribe to the collection can fulfil the most exhaustive research requirements of users, covering a broad range of disciplines, from geography to North American Native studies; from religious to political history; and from local and family history to French Canadian language and literature.