The Boards of the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (CIHM) and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) concluded an agreement on March 6, 2008 to merge CIHM and the AlouetteCanada initiative to create a new body with the official name of Canadiana.org.
All parties declared their commitment to a coordinated and sustained program to digitize Canada's information and knowledge resources and to provide easy online access to the extraordinary wealth of documentary and other resources by and about Canadians. President of the Board for the new organization, John Teskey, University Librarian at University of New Brunswick said,
“Imagine a country where every citizen has the opportunity to access its online cumulative cultural heritage; a country able to harness the will and energy of every library, archive, gallery, museum, historical society or institute of record to create a comprehensive collection of digital resources for the benefit of its citizens; a country committed to eliminating barriers of access, not only physical but geographical… through the work of our new organization, that country is Canada. Today, through the merger and work of Canadiana.org and AlouetteCanada, Canada is the country with that vision and Canadiana.org is now able to play a major role in realizing a coherent, national vision.”
Canadiana.org is a member-supported nation-wide alliance of high level organizations including and open to provincial and national level representative bodies such as provincial libraries, archives, museums and associations, the publishing and broadcasting communities and more, as well as an alliance of those holders, creators and contributors of content.
Canadiana.org is a Canadian registered charity governed by a board of directors composed of distinguished Canadian scholars and directors of major cultural institutions. There is an open invitation for everyone who is willing and able to come and play their own unique part in developing our collective Canadian online memory.
In 2008, then Canadiana.org Executive Director Magdalene Albert said, “For 30 years, the former CIHM has been one of the leading services of its kind in the world. The expertise of its staff in researching, locating, cataloguing and digitizing Canada’s published heritage for preservation as well as discovery and use by Canadians is widely recognized." In 2008, then AlouetteCanada Director, Brian Bell stated, "The merger with AlouetteCanada brings with it the commitment to creating, disseminating, preserving and sustaining the Canadian memory knowledge base in digital form for the benefit of all Canadians”.
Canadiana.org acknowledges the critical importance of the Canadian Digital Information Strategy in development by Library and Archives Canada. The Board of Canadiana.org calls on governments and funding bodies to support this new organization and its vision, to ensure that Canadians will better know themselves and that the world will know Canada - now and for generations to come.
The first inception of Canadiana.org was in 1978 when the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions (CIHM) was established to locate early printed Canadian materials (books, annuals, and periodicals) so as to preserve their content on microfilm and to make the resulting collections available to libraries and archives in Canada and abroad.
For a more complete history of CIHM, see the 2003 article: Preserving and Providing Access to Canada's Printed Heritage: The Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions at 25 Years by Myriam McCormack.
In 1997, CIHM began to digitize a portion of its microfiche and to provide online access to these titles. This successful project became Early Canadiana Online (ECO). In 2000, CIHM ended microfilming and began to provide a combination of subscription and open access to its Early Canadiana Research Collection through the ECO database which continues to grow today at Canadiana.org.
The AlouetteCanada initiative was founded by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) in 2006. AlouetteCanada members and partners recognized that as Canadian society shifts increasingly to a digital environment it becomes vital to have a national vision and a comprehensive plan to present Canada’s cultural heritage, documents and artefacts online and to provide for enduring access to that heritage.
Towards achieving that vision, on behalf of the Honourable Beverley J. Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women, Royal Galipeau, Member of Parliament (Ottawa-Orléans), announced March 16, 2007 funding of up to $328,600 for the AlouetteCanada Metadata Toolkit, a CARL project. The outcome of this research, the AlouetteCanada Metadata Toolkit, is to facilitate the use of appropriate metadata standards to ensure maximum use, interoperability and long-term accessibility of content.
In 2009, the open source Metadata Toolkit was launched by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries and the AlouetteCanada successor, Canadiana.org, as the Digital Collection Builder.
Today Canadiana.org continues to organize and facilitate access to and use of Canadian online content, and to preserve the digital content for generations to come. The goal of the merged Canadiana.org is to create, disseminate, preserve and sustain the knowledge base, scientific and cultural, of Canadian memory organizations in digital form to benefit all Canadians.
Formed in 1997, the mission of the membership organization Canadian Initiative on Digital Libraries (CIDL) was to promote, coordinate and facilitate the development of Canadian digital collections and services in order to optimize national interoperability and long-term access to Canadian digital library resources. CIDL was directed by a Steering Committee elected from Canadian member libraries, and the secretariat was provided by Library and Archives Canada as an in-kind contribution.
CIDL was a strong resource and advocate for the creation of a digital Canada. With the backing of CIDL members, the successful national digitization project Our Roots / Nos racines was undertaken and jointly led by University of Calgary Press and l'Université Laval Library. Today Our Roots / Nos racines continues to grow and make available online the most complete collection possible of Canadian local histories published in English or French.
CIDL experienced, in terms of time measured in the digital world, a long and productive 10-year existence. On January 25, 2007, the CIDL Steering Committee passed a resolution to dissolve CIDL and to fully endorse AlouetteCanada as its logical successor through which to realize the ambition of Digital Canada numérique, today known as Canadiana.org.
