Millions down, millions to go
Creation of digital library of historic documents a ‘mind-boggling’ task
The shelves are literally groaning under the weight of cartloads of microfilm at Canadiana, an organization working to create a massive digital library of Canadian history.
Established in 1978, the organization was involved in creating the same cartloads of microfilm images of documents from Library and Archives Canada. Since the early 2000s, it has kept pace with new technology, continuing its partnership with the library by digitizing documents and the already-created microfilms.
For its Early Canadiana project, consisting mostly of published documents, more than 250,000 pages per year are being digitized. More collections are searchable on the Canadiana Discovery Portal.
The Heritage project, which is putting images of the microfilms online, reached 15 million digitized pages in April out of a total of 60 million that it hopes to digitize in the next few years. More than six million of these images are already available and searchable on a free public website.
Some of these include papers from Colonel John By’s estate, records from the Central Experi- mental Farm and the notebooks of Canadian poet Archibald Lampman. Listed but not yet available are Barbara Ann Scott’s “black scrapbook” and letter books from the superintending engineer of the Rideau Canal.
Workers are “gobbling up the stuff as fast as they can get their hands on it,” said spokesman Daniel Velarde of the digitization process.
“People think it’s like scanning a piece of paper,” he said of the digitization process. “It’s important to remember preservation is a process, not an event. It’s not a one-time thing where you scan something and it’s preserved. Digital storage is no less perishable than print.”
There are ways to ensure digital storage is more sustainable, like housing servers in separate loca- tions and keeping multiple copies of all files.
The real challenge lies in creating metadata for the collections: descriptive information that allows users to search the collections with specific terms and find what they are looking for.
It’s one thing to do this with monographs, periodicals and documents that are typewritten. Software can be used to analyze the text and create a digital version automatically. But with most of the microfilm, pages are handwritten.
“You’re really going in blind,” said Velarde. He said crowdsourcing transcription is one of the only ways to go about it.
This can be done in partnership with people in research institutions who read and type out manuscripts, or commercial transcriptions that the organization would have to pay for.
Once their work is done, people will be able to access an enormous library of historical documents encompassing five themes: aboriginal history, military history, landmark papers of prominent Canadians, government documents and genealogical information.
“The sheer scale is kind of mindboggling,” Velarde said. “The value really lies in the whole.”
For example, someone interested in Canadian military history will be able to access all kinds of materials: war diaries, government documents, registrars, militia lists, army registration documents, periodicals, gazettes, coverage of military operations, literature and poems about the war.
Aside from Library and Archives Canada, the non-profit organization partners with many universities, the Canadian Library Association, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries and Industry Canada on its various projects.