Canadian site removes paywall
The Canadian history website canadiana.ca lifted its paywall on 1 January 2019.
The website holds the largest online collection of Canadian documentary heritage in the world. It has abandoned the paywall model following a merger between the website’s owner, the charity Canadiana.org, and the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), a not-forprofit partnership of 75 Canadian universities, finalised in April 2018.
Alan Shepard, chair of the CRKN’s board of directors and president and vice-chancellor of Concordia University in Montreal, explained that a poll of CRKN members showed that they believed increasing access to the Canadiana collections was “of vital importance”.
Canadiana consists of three flagship collections. Early Canadiana Online and Canadiana Online contain more than 19 million pages between them, focused on sources such as monographs, annuals, newspapers and other periodicals, and government publications.
The Héritage collection, developed in partnership with Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and CRKN, has 41 million pages of archival materials.
CRKN has committed to fund the development of Canadiana over the next three years. Other plans for the future of the project include: making it easier to find content; assessing descriptions, search terms and other keywords to ensure that they are culturally sensitive; and eventually making the Canadiana collections available under open access licences.