Canadian Digital Information Strategy Released

Library and Archives Canada has released a draft consultation version of its Canadian Digital Information Strategy (CDIS). Prepared in a style familiar to business strategy consultants, it is very broad in its scope – examining the range of interests involved in the mushrooming digital society of the 21st Century. To quote the proposed "Vision" of the CDIS: "Canada's digital information assets are created, managed and preserved to ensure that a significant Canadian digital presence and record is available to present and future generations, and that Canada's position in a global digital information economy is enhanced". How to reach that vision is the main subject of the CDIS and it discusses three broad opportunities to do so: (i) strengthening [uniquely] Canadian digital content, (ii) maximizing access to and use of that content by Canadians, and (iii) ensuring its preservation. The CDIS advocates free and open access to digitized content that derives from the Canadian public domain. However, it does not attempt to suggest how to resolve tensions between open interests and commercial interests. Rather, it aims to clarify the related issues without taking a position on how they should be resolved. It calls for implementation of a system for persistent identification of digital works and for the development of a distributed network of Trusted Digital Repositories responsible for data storage and ensuring content is not lost. A national certification process would be used to establish trustworthiness of these repositories. Prof Michael Geist refers to this high level strategic report as "sobering reading", in part because he feels Canada is far behind other countries in this area. For example, France's National Library has been digitizing documents for the last decade and will unveil its plan to provide online access to the public next March. This will include paid access to works protected by copyright. The US Library of Congress has also recently announced that it has teamed up with UNESCO and other libraries to create the World Digital Library which will provide free access to public domain material. The planning process for the World Digital Library is being underwritten by a gift from Google, which initiated its own controversial project to digitize the world's books in 2004. One goal of the CDIS is to foster "optimal" access to Canada's digital information assets to "everyone, everywhere". It suggests that "public domain" information be available to everyone, but that intellectual property rules and fees may also apply. While it discusses only the needs of and benefits to Canadians, it is unclear if access by foreign users has been considered. Making information freely available on the Internet in general opens up the difficult issues of attempting to restrict access or otherwise addressing concerns of other legal regimes where dissemination of certain material may be restricted by copyright or other laws. For example, distinctive aspects of copyright regimes, such as differing terms of protection, would need to be considered, since these may apply to Canadian copyright holders under international treaty provisions. The CDIS is available at: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/cdis/012033-1000-e.html For commentary, see: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2375/135/ For related stories, visit: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5go-RywJEn735IICVmgMCywOOx29A; and http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jL7MvmMofJiXdrMvqky_bfYmhAsQ Summary by: Tom Feather