Council of Canadian Academies Releases Expert Panel Report “Leading in the Digital World: Opportunities for Canada’s Memory Institutions”

February 4, 2015

News Release – The preservation of historical Canadian data is at risk, finds Expert Panel

Ottawa (February 4, 2015) – Released today by the Council of Canadian Academies, a new expert panel report, Leading in the Digital World: Opportunities for Canada’s Memory Institutions, addresses the challenges and opportunities that exist for libraries, archives, museums, and galleries as they adapt to the digital age. Canada is falling behind, and vast amounts of digital information are at risk of being lost because many traditional tools are no longer adequate in the digital age.

Memory institutions are confronted with many challenges, including technological change, increasing pressure on resources, and shifting public expectations. Furthermore, they face the difficult task of preserving digital files in formats that will remain accessible over the long term. As one of the most wired populations in the world, Canadians expect their heritage to be accessible and discoverable online. Today, past content and new digital information are not always accessible. This matter will not fade away with time – rather, it will become more prominent.

“Overall, our 13-member Expert Panel determined that, to meet the challenges presented by the digital revolution, memory institutions will need to focus strategic and business planning around digital technologies,” said Doug Owram, Chair of the Expert Panel. “There is an opportunity for these institutions to collaborate more strategically and develop interactive relationships with users, thereby enhancing content and providing meaningful experiences.”

The Panel’s key findings are:

• To keep pace with the fundamental and unavoidable digital changes that are reshaping society, Canada’s memory institutions must exercise their capacity to be leaders within and among their respective organizations.
• Many of the challenges faced are rooted in technical issues associated with managing digital content, the sheer volume of digital information, and the struggle to remain relevant.
• The digital world has the potential to change the relationship between memory institutions and people. The integration of a participatory culture into the daily operations of memory institutions can encourage a sustainable, authentic relationship with the public.
• Collaboration is essential for adaptation. It enables memory institutions to access the vital resources required to deliver the enhanced services that users now expect in the digital age.

Understanding the challenges faced by memory institutions, Library and Archives Canada requested that the Council conduct this in-depth assessment to better understand and navigate this period of change. The resulting report will help those involved in this area to reshape their policies and identify strategic opportunities. In addition, the report brings together a wide range of successful practices from around the world that could be considered for the Canadian context.

For more information or to download a copy of the Panel’s report, visit the Council of Canadian Academies’ website, www.scienceadvice.ca.

About the Council of Canadian Academies

The Council of Canadian Academies is an independent, not-for-profit organization that began operation in 2005. The Council undertakes independent, authoritative, science-based, expert assessments that inform public policy development in Canada. Assessments are conducted by independent, multidisciplinary panels (groups) of experts from across Canada and abroad. Panel members serve free of charge and many are Fellows of the Council’s Member Academies. The Council’s vision is to be a trusted voice for science in the public interest. For more information about the Council or its assessments, please visit www.scienceadvice.ca.

Executive Summary

Canada is now a digital society. Decades of evolving digital technologies have changed how we interact, the amount of cultural content we create and exchange, and the methods we use to create and exchange this content. This reality has profoundly affected the established ways in which memory institutions, such as libraries, archives, museums, and galleries, have been managing Canada’s documentary heritage for future generations. Indeed, the sheer volume of digital content necessitates new ways of locating, maintaining, and accessing digital holdings that must coexist alongside the continued need for the preservation of non-digital content.

To help better understand and navigate this period of change, Library and Archives Canada asked the Council of Canadian Academies (the Council) to undertake an assessment of memory institutions in the digital age to answer the following question:

How might memory institutions embrace the opportunities and challenges posed by the changing ways in which Canadians are communicating and working in the digital age?

Additional direction was provided in four sub-questions:

• With the use of new communication technologies, what types of records are being created and how are decisions being documented?
• How is information being safeguarded for usefulness in the immediate to mid-term across technologies considering the major changes that are occurring?
• How are memory institutions addressing issues posed by new technologies regarding their traditional roles in assigning value, respecting rights, and assuring authenticity and reliability?
• How can memory institutions remain relevant as a trusted source of continuing information by taking advantage of the collaborative opportunities presented by new social media?

To address these questions, the Council appointed a multidisciplinary expert panel (the Panel) with expertise in archiving, history, digital humanities, management of memory institutions, digital technologies as they relate to cultural content, and law. In preparing the report, the Panel drew upon evidence from a wide range of traditional and non-traditional sources with the goal of providing guidance to decision-makers concerned with the long-term success of Canadian memory institutions, both large and small. To encompass the range of new practices and services at the leading edge of a rapidly moving digital frontier, the Panel used non-traditional sources of information documented in specialized blogs and other social media to complement peer-reviewed literature. International examples from countries whose memory institutions have been at the forefront of adapting to the digital landscape were also valuable.

Main Findings

To keep pace with the fundamental and unavoidable digital change now reshaping society, Canada’s memory institutions must exercise their capacity to be leaders.

Effective institutional leadership that embraces the digital society and its opportunities can help guide change in all aspects of memory institutions’ operations, both technical and managerial. Without such leadership, the digital challenges will only get bigger. While digital strategies will vary by institution, the response to the digital world must be fully integrated into management decisions in all cases.

Facilitating the change requires an integration of human resource capabilities, bringing together established disciplinary knowledge and expertise with technical skills and legal knowledge, and a substantial refocus of resources to ensure positive digital outcomes. At a time of limited resources, digital priorities invariably compete with other corporate functions. All memory institutions can benefit from a significant rebalancing of these resources, one that recognizes the importance of digital initiatives and how they can augment other corporate functions.

Many of the challenges that memory institutions face as they attempt to adapt to the digital age are rooted in technical issues associated with managing digital content, the sheer volume of digital information, and the struggle to remain relevant.

Although the digital environment creates some new challenges for memory institutions, many of the challenges relevant to non-digital materials are amplified in the digital world for the following reasons:

• Technical challenges — Unlike non-digital material, digital entities can only be experienced when they are processed by technology, which becomes obsolete quickly. Memory institutions are challenged with preserving files in formats that will remain accessible over the long term. Technical challenges have important legal ramifications for archives, since they are trusted to preserve records that may be used in lawsuits, human rights inquiries, and other investigations.

• Volume of information — For archives in particular, deciding which records to preserve is made more difficult by the growing amount of material to appraise, including content created by the public using web-based tools such as blogs and YouTube.

• Relevance — Users now expect information to be available from online search engines such as Google. Thus memory institutions are becoming increasingly aware that they are not central web destinations for information seekers. The copyright laws that memory institutions must follow in their daily activities are not always relevant for the digital age.

While these challenges may appear daunting, memory institutions can take advantage of the opportunities created by the digital age. Cultural shifts and technical advantages can also help memory institutions adapt to the digital environment and maintain relevance.

The digital world has the potential to fundamentally change the relationship between memory institutions and people for the better. The integration of a participatory culture into the daily operations of memory institutions will ensure that they establish a sustainable, authentic relationship with the public.

New technologies are allowing memory institutions to redefine their relationship with users in ways that increase their participation and engagement in a range of institutional activities related to documentary heritage. If done successfully, the Canadian cultural landscape can be transformed in important ways. By establishing meaningful relationships that foster trust between institutions and users, memory institutions can leverage both skilled and non-skilled input from citizens while providing them with enhanced and valued experience.

Building relationships is especially important for memory institutions that steward Aboriginal cultural heritage and archival records. Meaningful collaborations between Aboriginal communities and museums aimed at increasing digital access to, and engagement with, cultural heritage may play a role in broader efforts at reconciliation.

Memory institutions are beginning to realize that digital projects, which may be national or even international, must establish firm roots in the community in order to succeed. For example, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) manages a project that involves training local librarians in digital technologies. The librarians will use their new skills to help community members digitize their personal materials, thereby enriching DPLA holdings with local content.

Once memory institutions forge relationships with community members, they can more easily engage citizens in various participatory projects. These projects benefit both the institutions (e.g., by enhancing the content or descriptive data of collections) and the public (e.g., by providing them with unique experiences). Dedicated expert volunteers may even design software programs that enhance the day-to-day functions of memory institutions or create innovative applications that encourage further input from the public.

Collaboration is essential for adaptation. It allows memory institutions to access resources vital for delivering enhanced services that users now expect in the digital age.

Through collaboration, memory institutions can access the breadth of knowledge, skills, and technical infrastructure that underpin both core and specialized services. This allows them to carry out their main functions much more efficiently. For example, collaboration can make core services more convenient for users, reduce the workload for individual institutions, and increase standardization of policies and digital platforms.

In addition to accomplishing these more practical goals, collaboration can provide unique opportunities for the public that would not be possible if memory institutions acted alone. Through collaborations with private companies and academia, memory institutions can become involved in exciting activities that enhance their visibility and undertake large projects that require additional resources. Memory institutions can cultivate trusting relationships and create rewarding experiences for both themselves and their diverse users by collaborating with various communities. These relationships can pave the way for future collaborations and engagement in participatory opportunities. An integral concept for the success of many of these collaborative strategies is openness.

Knowledge sharing, innovation, and further collaboration are enabled when programmers make their software open source and when memory institutions release data under open licences. Countries that have provided cultural data to their citizens and encouraged reuse of data through activities such as contests have demonstrated the benefits of this approach.

For collaborations to be successful, however, memory institutions must be conscious of the need to manage reputational and other risks associated with collaborations and to gain proper credit for their role and contribution.

BENEFITS OF BEING DIGITAL

The digital opportunities of today demand collaboration and information sharing. In lowering barriers to collaboration and enabling more complex services, digital technologies provide memory institutions with an exceptional opportunity to engage a wider set of culturally relevant, but geographically dispersed, communities. Memory institutions would benefit by becoming more vocal participants in the current national debate on digital infrastructure, given its potential to support the acquisition and preservation of digital heritage. Such participation would ensure that their needs, along with those of the wider public, are represented.

Leading digitally is also about keeping pace with expectations. In all facets of our lives, we expect citizen-centric services to seamlessly interact with how we use and access digital material and information every day. If documentary heritage is to be used in the shaping of Canada’s culture, it must be digitally discoverable and accessible. Expanding presence in these digital spaces is therefore important for future relevance.

Canada’s memory institutions are historically contingent: Library and Archives Canada dates back to the establishment of the Dominion Archives in 1872 and the National Library of Canada in 1953. The digital environment of the 21st century is a different time and place. Despite the recognized limitations and responsibilities of governments and institutions, the internet, a worldwide repository of documentary material, is fast becoming its own archive. In the past, we could only read one book at a time. Today, we can use machines to “read” millions of books, examine thousands of artefacts, or wade through a myriad of records at once. New understandings and interpretations will emerge from these new ways of accessing information. It is an exciting moment, and Canada’s memory institutions have an opportunity to show leadership and shape the way in which we remember, now and in the future.