Vancouver Armories Under construction, 1935
More and more public archives are finding their funding restricted, reduced and cut. This impairs their ability to preserve the public records they have been given in public trust. Along comes an organized company that will do this work for them for a simple fee. Fewer staffing concerns for the administrators of the public archives. That makes a lot of sense and seems a good use of public money.
Unless you are a history geek or searching family genealogy and are directed from a publicly funded institution to Canadiana.ca .
Soldier on Calgary street (my dad)
Quick rundown, it is a private company that is engaged in the preservation of public records through digitization and, in turn, makes these records available to the public. For a fee. Let me be clear here, I do not begrudge them the initiative or need to recoup their costs.
My problem is that we will be paying twice for materials that are ours to begin with. The Library and Archives of Canada are currently negotiating with Canadiana.ca to digitize and preserve all the records currently held by this facility. Our records. Our history.
There is a calm, reasonable blog post on the Canadiana site saying there will be no pay firewall to access the records once digitized. We will not be denied access to our history. However, nose around the site and it becomes obvious that while the access is not restricted, any use of the materials is. Once Canadiana.ca takes these items and digitizes them, those records become property of Canadiana.ca . Neat, eh?
Vancouver Hockey Team 1914
Of course the originals are ours. Of course we can take a look at the digital reproduction of the street we grew up on. Or a turn of the century daguerreotype of a public figure. But if you wish to use that digital copy in, say, a blog post or a family newletter or a school project, the question of copyright coughs politely and points to the sign listing the prices of subscription and reproduction.
You haven’t heard anything about this because the discussions have been done in complete secrecy. There have been a series of articles in the Ottawa Citizen in regard to this initiative. First there is one about a former Chief Archivist speaking out against the move to privatize the records of LAC (Library and Archives of Canada) This is quickly followed by the realization there is a national archives and it’s really really big but its not put much thought into digitizing all that stuff. So, apparently, we are in the process of giving the damn thing away. The conclusion here is that a power-that-be decided it would be best just to shuffle everything off to these nice people in the shiny suits because they’ll do it for us.
No need to discuss it with anybody, boss says do it.
Better Baby contest Vancouver Exhibition 1913
So ask yourself, “is it important?” Do you care that our history, records (including everything currently in public domain) and, basically, the story of Canada are being handed over to a private company? It may well be a great idea. I don’t dispute that but what I want to know is, why didn’t the government ask us first?
Pass the salt; care for a beer?; we’re thinking of selling your birthright: oh look, a distraction.
Or is it just one more privatization of our country, one more example of ‘the boss says do it.’ And we’re not the boss anymore.
If you like the online petition thing, check out this link from The Sum of Us.org
Or call up your MP
Or tell me to stop being such a fussy bun.
(I’m test driving a new comments system so let me know what you think about it too.)
(All the photos, except the one of my dad, are from the City of Vancouver Archives currently digitizing their entire collection and putting everything online free of charge. If there’s a copyright on a photo, they tell you and let you work it out.)