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Points of convergence: seamless long-term access to digital publications and archival records at library and archives Canada

Abstract

In 2004, Canada’s national library and national archives merged to form Library and Archives Canada (LAC). LAC has become more than the sum of its parts, creating synergies between library and archives collections and services, realizing efficiencies and satisfying user demands for seamless access to all holdings. LAC has already created and launched Fed Search, an online search tool that provides clients with single-search access to library, archives and online collections. LAC is in the process of building a Trusted Digital Repository that will combine ingest, preservation, management and dissemination services for archives and library collections.

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Notes

  1. Fed Search is the principle search interface on the LAC website. Although the default is for federated searching, users also can search library, archival, genealogical or website resources separately. The LAC website is available at www.collectionscanada.gc.ca.

  2. More information about MODS is available from the MODS website at the Library of Congress, available at http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/. For a discussion of some of the challenges that must be resolved to bridge descriptive standards for libraries, archives and museums, see Elings and Waibel 2007; Riley and Shepherd 2009.

  3. Sometimes called a record group or archive group in the United States.

  4. Further information about LAC TDR can be found on the LAC website. Available: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/digital-initiatives/012018-4000.01-e.html. Accessed: June 30, 2009.

  5. More information about OAIS and TRAC can be found on the web. OAIS is available at http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/650x0b1.pdf; TRAC is available at: http://www.crl.edu/content.asp?l1=13&l2=58&l3=162&l4=91.

  6. More information on METS and PREMIS is available on their respective web pages at the Library of Congress. METS: metadata encoding and transmission standard. Available: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/. Accessed: December 3, 2008. PREMIS: preservation metadata maintenance activity. Available: http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/. Accessed: December 3, 2008.

  7. More information on OAI repositories is available from: Herbert Van de Sompel and Carl Lagoze, eds. The Open Archives Initiative protocol for metadata harvesting. Version 1.0. (Open Archives, April 24, 2001). Available: http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/1.0/openarchivesprotocol.htm. Accessed: December 3, 2008.

  8. More information on JHOVE and DROID are available from their websites. Harvard College. JHOVE: JSTOR/Harvard object validation environment. Available: http://hul.harvard.edu/jhove/. Accessed: December 3, 2008. United Kingdom. The National Archives. DROID: digital record object identification. Available: http://droid.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Introduction. Accessed: December 3, 2008.

  9. Further information on the government record disposition program is available from the Government records appraisal and disposition program pages on the LAC website: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/government/disposition/007007-1034-e.html. Accessed November 17, 2008.

  10. Pam Armstrong, coauthor of this paper, currently is chair of the body that will merge the two principle international format registries, GDFR (based at Harvard University) and PRONOM (hosted by The National Archives UK), in order to create a Unified Digital Formats Registry (UDFR). For more information on UDFR, visit: The Unified Digital Formats Registry (UDFR). Available: http://www.gdfr.info/udfr.html. Accessed: July 29, 2009. For more information on PRONOM, visit: Welcome to PRONOM. Available: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/Default.aspx#. Accessed: July 29, 2009. For more information on GDFR, visit: Welcome to the Global Digital Format Registry. Available: http://www.gdfr.info/. Accessed: July 30, 2009.

  11. For more information, visit: About Theses Canada. Available: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/thesescanada/s4-240-e.html. Accessed: December 3, 2008.

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Correspondence to Greg Bak.

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Bak, G., Armstrong, P. Points of convergence: seamless long-term access to digital publications and archival records at library and archives Canada. Arch Sci 8, 279–293 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-009-9091-4

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