Last week, I reported on the new digitization partnership
between the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and Canadian.org (see blog
posting of Aug 23rd “Some land
records are being digitized”), and now it has been made official.
The LAC has agreed to a “large-scale digitization
partnership involving about 60 million images from numerous collections”.
A couple of things caught my eye –
This will be a ”10-year agreement with this
longstanding partner (which) covers the digitization, indexing and description
of millions of personal, administrative and government documents, as well as
land grants, war diaries and photographs. There will be no change for those
Canadians who wish to access these collections at LAC.
The go on to further say that “Canadiana.org also
will also transcribe millions of handwritten pages, and create related
descriptions. Enhanced search tools facilitating access to these records will
be available to Canadians free of charge at LAC, as well as at hundreds
of subscribing libraries in regions across Canada. For a small monthly fee,
Canadians will also be able to use the enhanced tools online to conduct
advanced searches without leaving home”
Notice that the press release says nothing about
newspapers. And what will be the fee? And when will this take place?
It also sounds as if you want to see these records
free of charge, you will have to visit them at the LAC in Ottawa.
To read the full report, go to http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/news/Pages/2013/lac-canadiana-partner-digitization.aspx
