National Archives Content Online

I think the Library and Archives Canada should expand their digitization in a few ways:

• The Library and Archives Canada should take more advantage of Web 2.0. LAC could create a wiki to allow researchers to upload digital images of archival documents and descriptions and notes about the documents. This would be a way for Canadians to work together to make our Canadian historical documents available online. More and more researchers are taking photographs of documents, and archives allow and encourage this. Why not make use of these images and create an easy way to share them? Researchers also make notes about what is contained in various files. Why not create a way to allow these notes to be added to the database and shared with other researchers, making Canadian historical documents easier to find? A wiki could help to speed up other digitization projects at the archives and would work alongside them.
• Make historical issues of Hansard and other Parliamentary records available online. Canada's history of Parliamentary debate is currently only available from 1994 on. It should be available all the way back to 1867 and before.
• Get the microfiche digitized and put it online

Comments

infzy — 2010–05–11 07:04:12 EDT wrote

Digitizing the Library and Archives is not enough — in order for our people and businesses to be able to effectively use (and explore new ways of using) our historical works, the government should relinquish any copyrights which restrict their use. A work is not truly public unless it is in the public domain; crown copyright should be revoked so that all Canadians are free to preserve and appreciate our heritage (including our contemporary history).

datalibre.ca · Open Data — Vote & Submit — 2010–06–19 09:43:48 EDT wrote

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