National Heritage Digitization Strategy (NHDS): Spring Update
June 13, 2019
The National Heritage Digitization Strategy (NHDS) Steering Committee shared an update on its work this week.
Spring Update from the National Heritage Digitization Strategy (NHDS)
Welcome to our New Chair
The NHDS Steering Committee is happy to welcome its new Chair, Paul Takala, Chief Librarian and CEO of the Hamilton Public Library. Paul has extensive experience in collaborative initiatives, having previously served as the Chair of the Canadian Urban Library Council (CULC) and Co-Chair of the Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA). Paul is looking forward to hearing from the community as he supports the activities of the NHDS.
Paul takes over from Martha Whitehead, the newly appointed head of Harvard libraries. Martha was a key contributor of the NHDS since it began in 2016. We thank her for her tremendous contribution and wish her the best in her new role.
New Term of the Steering Committee
The Steering Committee is also excited to start its new term. In late 2019, the committee welcomed 10 new members, and retained 13 others. The complete list of Steering Committee members is on our website. We also created a Technical Working Group to provide technical advice and guidance to the Committee.
New Resources and Activities
Resources – We recently collaborated on two documents and we invite your feedback: a literature review on digital preservation formats and a digitization best practices document summarizing existing digitization standards and resources.
Digitized newspapers — We have posted digitized copies of the Nunatsiaq News. This is the final title digitized under our newspaper digitization pilot project.
RightsStatements – We named two Canadian members to the RightsStatements.org Working Groups. Sarah Severson, will be part of the Statements Working Group and Sascha Adler will be part of the Technical. The NHDS also contributed to the French translation of RightsStatements. This version is open for public consultation until June 24th.
Events
World Digital Library – NHDS representatives attended the “The World Digital Library in a Global Context” meeting in the Netherlands earlier this year. The meeting explored options for the future of the World Digital Library, and Pangia, a proposed global, interoperable digital library. We continue to monitor and contribute to these discussions.
Congress of the Association des archivistes du Québec (AAQ) – NHDS members were happy to participate in the Congress of the AAQ. It was an opportunity to talk about our work, answer questions and gather feedback.
Metadata Summit – The NHDS Technical Working Group has started planning a metadata summit. This GLAM-wide event will help us as a community identify common issues of interest and learn more from each other. Stay tuned for more details.
Get Involved
You can be part of the NHDS by:
- Learning more about us on our website;
- Pledging your support;
- Sending us your thoughts about any of our work (secretariat@nhds.ca).
About the NHDS
The NHDS is a growing coalition of memory institutions working together to leverage expertise and resources to support the digitization, preservation and discovery of Canadian documentary heritage.
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