Improving Canada's Digital Advantage: Strategies for Sustainable Prosperity
Submitted by Canadiana.org 2010–07–08 10:41:05 EDT
Theme(s): Growing the ICT Industry, Innovation Using Digital Technologies
Summary
Canadiana.org is a non–profit organization governed by a board of directors comprising representatives from Canada's major memory institutions, industry and distinguished Canadian scholars. With a pan–Canadian platform, Canadiana.org represents the interests of many key partnering constituencies that include content creators, content holders (memory, education, science, government, private sector) and content end–users of cultural heritage and scientific resources.
We applaud this initiative and are very pleased to submit our perspective on how to improve Canada's digital advantage. This submission responds to the section titled Digital Media: Creating Canada's Digital Content Advantage.
While we need to ensure new creative content industries grow and thrive we must also celebrate and preserve over 400 years of Canadian creativity and make it accessible to Canadians. We believe the strategy should be expanded to include not only new digital media, but also the creation of digital media through the digitization of Canada's existing documentary heritage. Further, it is essential to provide a preservation and access infrastructure for all digital media, new and old, as it enters the Canadian corpus. To do so will multiply the value of digital content through the widest possible distribution for present and future generations. Converting Canadian documentary heritage to new digital media will add the knowledge essential to the new digital economy, which, in turn, is a key ingredient for Canada's competitiveness in the global economy. Other countries are investing substantially in putting their cultural and scientific heritage online as well as building infrastructure and capacity to manage and exploit digital content. To be competitive, Canada must also invest in heritage content and infrastructure for online preservation and access.
Canada's documentary heritage is held by many memory institutions across the country. These institutions have had the responsibility and capability to preserve and make accessible Canadian content for many decades. They recognize the critical importance of making their collections available online now and for future generations. It is important to continue to entrust these institutions with the responsibility and provide the funding required to ensure Canada's new and old documentary heritage is accessible for present and future generations. Canada needs to continue to entrust its heritage to the memory institutions.
Our memory institutions are self organizing regionally and nationally in collaborative projects to benefit from shared expertise, economies of scale, common goals and interoperability. After over a dozen years of digitizing content, creating digital preservation repositories and modern web based access to the collections, they can provide a strong base on which to build and grow Canada's digital content. The job to be done is well understood and documented in the business case for the Canada Online project, a Canadiana.org collaborative initiative. A pan–Canadian collaboration of major memory institutions has been organized and, with funding, is ready to undertake programmes to create, convert, preserve and make accessible Canadian digital media now.
Submission
Background
The global economy is rapidly evolving to a knowledge–based new economy fueled by a growing body of academic, scientific, government and cultural content available on the Internet. It is vital to Canada's future as a competitive player in the global market to make the corpus of Canadian content accessible online to all Canadian citizens, including scholars, researchers, entrepreneurs and businesses.
Digital information is destined to be a primary engine of job growth, commercial innovation, international trade and Canadian prosperity in the coming decades. Access to contemporary and past Canadian knowledge is a key infrastructure requirement for Canada. Easy access to online information drives productivity, advances research and education and enables the delivery of more effective products and services. This, in turn, fosters economic growth and permits Canadians to compete more effectively in the knowledge–based new economy.
The availability of digital content is recognized by many countries as a major component of modern Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure. Jurisdictions consequently are investing substantially in their digital information environments, placing their cultural and scientific heritage online as well as building infrastructure and capacity to manage and exploit digital content. To be competitive, Canada must also invest in heritage content and infrastructure for online preservation and access.
Examples of Worldwide Digital Content Initiatives
Increasingly, governments throughout the world recognize that the most effective way to deliver information to their citizens is in digital format through the Internet. Making digital images of national documentary heritage easily accessible attracts the general public in vast numbers, far exceeding previous use of their resources by only specialized researchers.
Many countries — among them the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, Australia, New Zealand, and China — have digitization strategies, robust programs, and organizational approaches in place.
The following three snapshots of current developments around the world demonstrate the new approaches to information and government–sponsored efforts to prepare for the digital age.
UNESCO along with 32 other partner institutions has launched the World Digital Library with cultural materials from libraries and archives around the world. The site includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, and prints and photographs. It provides unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.
In the European Union, the Europeana project has created a massive European digital library. This program announced direct EU funding of $195 M (CDN) for 2009–2010 alone, with member countries expected to add direct and in–kind contributions. When the portal launched in November 2008, it received overwhelming public interest (over 15 million hits per hour).
In the Netherlands, funding for digitization issues chiefly from the government through the KB (National Library). Public library funding for digitization comes through the KB Metamorfoze. The Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN) handles museum digitization. "Images of the Future" is a project from the Dutch Film Museum, Institute for Sound and Vision, Central Discotheque Rotterdam, National Archives, Association of Public Libraries and Knowledgeland. It started in 2007 and is both conservation — and accessibility–motivated. Government funding of €173 M per year ($231.8 M CDN) is provided over seven years. The project will develop an infrastructure for distribution and all the material will be made available for educational and creative purposes. The scope is estimated to be 20% of the total audio–visual collection in the Netherlands, including 285,000 hours of film, television and radio recordings and 2.9 million photos.
In the United States, 'Digital Promise' legislation enacted in 2008 aims, in part, to establish a National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, which will "harness the increasing capacity of advanced information and digital technologies to improve all levels of learning and education, formal and informal, in order to provide Americans with the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the global economy." This non–profit center received $63 M (CDN) in funding in 2009.
The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) is a US preservation and infrastructure program established by the Library of Congress in 2000. Five M (USD) was issued immediately to support the development of an approach and the other $95 M was made available after Congressional approval of the approach.
Consultation Questions
What does creating Canada's digital content advantage mean to you?
To be an advantage in the global economy it needs to address all aspects of creation, preservation and ongoing access. Canada needs to create a cohesive sustainable infrastructure to digitize documentary heritage, collect born–digital content, aggregate, preserve and make it accessible online for now and future generations.
What are the core elements in Canada's marketplace framework for digital media and content? What elements do you believe are necessary to encourage the creation of digital media and content in both official languages and to reflect our Aboriginal and ethnocultural communities?
The core elements of a framework are web based tools to find/deliver relevant content, local, regional, provincial and national aggregators for storage and preservation of digital content and the bandwidth to deliver on–demand.
The elements necessary to encourage creation include a vibrant market for the goods in Canada and abroad, investment in tools and resources to create, convert, describe and post new content.
Designing preservation into the infrastructure now will insure content is available to future generations at a much lower cost than retro–fitting a solution later.
How do you see digital content contributing to Canada's prosperity in the digital economy?
The following points describe how we see digital content contributing to Canada's prosperity:
Global Competitiveness in the Knowledge–Based New Economy
Managing knowledge and information will be central to international competitiveness and financial success. The long term benefit for Canada in the knowledge–based new economy is substantial. The access to Canadian content will benefit education, accelerate research and create an export capacity for online content and Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to other cultures and economies.
Jobs for Canadians
Based on the Canada Online business case and project plan, 1,200 jobs would be created in the first 2 years to support a Canada wide digitization initiative scoped to capture 10% of the corpus per year. With an initial investment in the content digitization/preservation/access infrastructure and training, the rate of online content will accelerate and more jobs will be created. The economic spin–offs from these heritage digitization projects will create thousands of jobs over time.
Innovative Commercial Products
There is an opportunity for Canada to take the lead in new innovative technologies for preservation networks and access. Research projects will provide Canadian digital libraries with immediate functional benefits and Canadian companies with commercial product development opportunities that will have global applications. We also encourage an open source software philosophy. It accelerates the evolution of product development, encourages competition and opens avenues of innovation to a broad base of creative talent.
Critical Mass for a Sustainable Digitization Sector
Canada Online will digitize approximately 10% of the Canadian Corpus while putting in place the critical mass of infrastructure and trained workforce to continue a sustainable digitization programme funded by cost recovery, funding and sponsorship methods.
Economies of Scale for Canadian digitization Projects
Mass–digitization projects optimize workflow and the economies of scale reduce the cost per page. Infrastructure, overheads and one–time setup costs are spread over a higher volume of work. For the same investment more work can be accomplished. By organizing collection holders to coordinate by media type and have their content digitized at a mass–digitization centre, their costs are dramatically lowered.
21st–Century Training
As a result of digitization projects bringing content to the web, Canada's documentary heritage will be available to schools and universities across the country for free, and will permit educators great innovation in their learning environments. Not only would Canada be an information–rich country, but also its citizens would stand amongst the globe's first information–rich workforce. This, in turn, will make Canada more competitive and create more jobs.
Research
Canada Online will provide vast amounts of information — many times more than any single library or archive in the country — that will be readily retrieved and therefore easy to use. Canadians will be uniquely empowered to understand their country by using the vast quantities of the corpus that Canada Online makes available to them.
Empowering the Canadian Creative Economy
The equivalent of 4 million titles (books, government documents, scholar theses, periodicals and newspapers) will be made available to Canadian scholars, writers, journalists, film and documentary makers, poets, painters and others. All will have an invaluable digital resource.
What kinds of 'hard' and/or 'soft' infrastructure investments do you foresee in the future? What kinds of infrastructure will you need in the future to be successful at home and abroad?
We see a need for investments in the existing memory institutions (museums, libraries and archives) to enable them to exercise their mandate to be both the national memory as well as the source of knowledge, education, history, culture and entertainment for Canadians.
Many successful digitization projects have been undertaken by many of Canada's memory institutions. Good examples are the LAC's archival materials, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) newspapers and journals and images of early Quebec, the University of Toronto book project, The Toronto Library rare books collection, The Alberta "Our Roots" collection of local histories, The Simon Fraser University Multi–cultural Canada Collection, the Synergies collection of Masters and PhD theses, Canadiana.org's Early Canadian Online, the CHIN Virtual Museum, and many more.
How can stakeholders encourage investment, particularly early stage investment, in the development of innovative digital media and content?
There is a need to see the kinds of products and services that are a spin–off from investing in the nation's memory infrastructure. For example if all Canadian content (new and old) is catalogued in a single (logical) Canadian Metadata Repository, then the content can be accessed. With such a catalogue, many spin–off web portals can be created on any subject matter, making all digital media accessible.
How can we ensure that all Canadians, including those with disabilities (learning, visual, auditory), will benefit from and participate in the Canadian digital economy?
A sustainable successful digital strategy will recognize Canada's ethnic diversity, multiculturalism and universal access. We believe that Canadiana.org's guiding principles provide a good starting position for Canada's Strategy for Sustainable Progress:
- To promote open content collaboration amongst Canadian memory institutions;
- To offer free access to public domain and public sector content for current and future generations;
- To ensure that copyright and intellectual property are respected;
- To reflect Canadian values, including bilingualism, multiculturalism, inclusiveness and equity;
- To adopt and promote internationally recognized standards and best practices;
- To facilitate preservation and long–term access infrastructures for future generations; and
- To support collaborative research at home and abroad by providing access to digital content.
Access is the key driver for a successful digital strategy. It starts with the guiding principles of inclusiveness that make Canada a great country. An inclusive digital strategy makes all content accessible to all Canadians.
New technologies that enable universal access to digital media are in continuous development. As the online corpus grows and becomes accessible the market for innovative solutions will also grow. We can ensure all Canadians can benefit from and participate in the Canadian digital economy by supporting the innovators in these fields.
Universal access also requires the creation of collaborative preservation networks of trusted repositories and metadata repositories so content can be found and accessed from anywhere.
Conclusions
Canadiana.org is encouraged by the Government's digitization strategy and we have confidence that the content scope to be broadened to include the Canadian documentary heritage. Converting Canadian documentary heritage to new digital media will add the knowledge essential to the new digital economy, which, in turn, is a key ingredient for Canada's competitiveness in the global economy. Canada needs to continue to entrust its heritage to the memory institutions. A pan–Canadian collaboration of major memory institutions has been organized and, with funding, is ready to undertake programmes to create, convert, preserve and make accessible Canadian digital media now.
