Place de la Cité,
Gatineau, the offices for LAC staff
Monica with Steve Sekerak
of LAC and Paul Miller of Talis, UK
The entrance
to Parliament House, Ottawa
A different
view of Parliament House
Ice skating on the Rideau
Canal
Gatineau National
Park, Quebec
A Staff Interchange with Library and Archives Canada
In August 2006, I left Australia to work for Library and Archives
Canada (LAC) for 11 months as Manager of Strategic Initiatives in their
Information Technology Branch. The Government of Canada has an Interchange
Canada program which supports the temporary exchange of staff between
their federal agencies and other institutions both within Canada and
internationally.
My participation in meetings of the International Internet Preservation Consortium
(IIPC) from its inception in 2003 led to the development of personal contacts
and information exchanges with IT staff from a number of national libraries
and archives, including LAC. This ultimately resulted in an invitation to work
as a consultant there for a period of time, with the objective that I would
bring in a fresh perspective and an awareness of digital library initiatives
taking place in other national memory institutions, and in particular the NLA.
It was a wonderful opportunity for me both professionally and personally. I
believe that the short-term disruption caused by my absence from my post at
the NLA will be more than compensated for over the longer term by increased
collaboration with an institution whose mandate and environment is very similar
to ours. Peter Bruce, the Chief Technology Officer for LAC, and Leigh Swain,
the Manager of the Research and Standards section, supported my travel to a
number of events in North America and to IIPC meetings in Paris and San Francisco.
I also worked with staff in their Strategic Office and was asked to write some
reports as well as contribute to others. It was a wonderful opportunity to
have the time to do lots of reading, research and discussion, knowing that
it was of benefit both to LAC and to the NLA. My French language studies were
also supported while I was there. Like all federal agencies in Canada, LAC—or
Bibliothèque et Archives Canada (BAC)—is a bilingual institution,
and staff are required to be bilingual to varying levels depending upon their
role in the organisation.
LAC is a federal portfolio agency created by the Parliament of Canada in 2004,
when it merged the National Archives of Canada (founded in 1872 as the Public
Archives of Canada) and the National Library of Canada (founded in 1953). It
is an agency of the Department of Canadian Heritage and its director is known
as the Librarian and Archivist of Canada. The first and current holder of this
title is the former National Archivist, Ian E. Wilson. After the merger there
are now slightly more than 1160 employees. Their collecting mandate is broader
than ours as it also covers federal government records, the national sound
and film collections and the national portrait collection.
The main building is located in Wellington Street, Ottawa, next door to the
Supreme Court and close to Parliament House. This building was formerly the
National Library of Canada and is located on the Ottawa River, which forms
the border between Ontario and Quebec. All the services to the public are located
in this main building and about one-third of LAC staff work here. The remaining
staff have been relocated from various buildings in the vicinity to a single
new 10-storey office block in Gatineau, Quebec, approximately 13 kilometres
north-east of Ottawa. Public transport and other facilities such as proximity
to shops and restaurants are not very good, as this is the first government
agency to be located in this area.
These new offices are opposite the Gatineau Preservation Centre which was opened
in 1997 and is a state-of-the-art preservation facility, with three stories
of concrete vaults topped with a floor containing preservation laboratories
and digitisation facilities. This inner building is surrounded by an outer
shell of glass and steel, creating an environmental buffer zone. Archival records
as well as rare books, maps, photographs and paintings are stored in the vaults.
The National Portrait Collection is stored here waiting for a permanent exhibition
space.
Their Information Technology Branch is considerably larger than the IT division
at the NLA, with three times the number of staff and contractors and three
times the budget. Due to the urgent need to refresh many of their legacy systems
in a short time frame, a business case was presented to their Treasury Board
for additional one-off funding for an IT systems refresh of approximately A$27
million. This has been granted over three years beginning this financial
year, and they have commenced redeveloping their existing library management
systems and their national union catalogue infrastructure. This is a large
and complex project, and their choices of products and technologies and the
resulting outcomes will be of considerable interest to us.
They will also be building a Trusted Digital Repository for their digital collections
during this same time frame, and the development of a Virtual Loading Dock
to process deposited electronic publications is already close to completion.
Legal deposit legislation in Canada has been amended to cover electronic publications,
and this came into effect on 1 January this year. They are in advance of us
in this area and in the systems and tools they have implemented to manage their
archival collections. However, there are other areas where we have more advanced
IT capability—services like Libraries Australia, Music Australia and
Picture Australia, and the access we provide to our digital collections. The
benefit of collaboration is thus obvious to both our institutions.
In 2005 LAC initiated a dialogue with the goal of framing a Canadian Digital
Information Strategy (CDIS). The vision for this strategy is that 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. Through a series of meetings, LAC consulted
with over 200 stakeholder organisations from a variety of sectors, culminating
in a National Summit in December 2006. At the summit a broad consensus on the
elements of a National Strategy emerged, leading to the development of a document
which is due for release for public comment this month. I believe this document
and the processes behind its development will be a good model for the NLA to
follow.
Living in Ottawa and experiencing all that the region has to offer scenically
and culturally was a great experience for me and my family. Situated on the
border between Ontario and Quebec, and with historically high levels of immigration,
Ottawa is a great place to sample the cultural and linguistic diversity of
Canada and admire the civility and tolerance of their multi-cultural society.
There is a number of ski fields in the nearby Gatineau Hills, less than 30
minutes from LAC’s offices, with night-skiing facilities and season passes
for lift tickets that are unbelievably low-priced from an Australian perspective.
The Rideau Canal, which is a 202-kilometre waterway connecting the Ottawa River
to Lake Ontario, provides an 8-kilometre-long ice skating rink in late winter
stretching from downtown Ottawa to the first set of canal locks. Their War
Museum, Museum of Civilisation and National Art Gallery are some of the attractions,
along with their magnificent parliamentary buildings that pull crowds of visitors
from all over the country and foreign tourists as well. The Federal Capital
region, which includes the city of Gatineau in Quebec as well as Ottawa in
Ontario, has a population of over one million and sustains a champion ice hockey
team—the Ottawa Senators.
During my time at LAC I recognised many initiatives and projects suitable for
collaboration, and I hope that more staff exchanges will occur. As we emphasise
collaboration as a means to further our objectives in a more global environment,
there is the desire to collaborate more with partners, but making it happen
can be difficult. Having the personal connections between staff that arise
from such interchanges can break down some of the barriers.
Monica Berko
Director, Collections
Infrastructure



