Milestones: Canadiana.org Has Now Digitized More Than 15 Million Pages

From Canadiana.org:

Heritage, a project to digitize and provide access to vast troves of unpublished archival material, has reached a milestone of 15 million pages digitized by Canadiana.org and Library and Archives Canada (LAC). Some 6.2 million digital images are already accessible through the project’s searchable portal, with the remaining images following hot on their heels.
This achievement is the first landmark in a 10-year effort to make accessible roughly 60 million pages of LAC archival material and to ensure its preservation well into the future. Chronicling Canada’s institutions and people from the 1600s to the mid-1900s, the completed Heritage collection will represent an important resource for students, genealogists, and scholars in a wide variety of fields.
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Distinguished Canadian archivists, librarians and scholars have been invited to form Priority Advisory Groups to steer the digitization work and Metadata Consultations Groups to advise on metadata and linking standards. Metadata enhancement will begin shortly and is expected to bring out large sets of data fully integrated into the platform for linking and discovery.
Through the Canadian Research Knowledge Network consortium, 47 Canadian universities generously provided start-up funds for the project.
Canadiana.org members support the organization’s general operations and infrastructure, attesting to the increasing importance and value of a nationwide library alliance. Canadiana.org appreciates the longstanding commitments from member libraries to support digital preservation.
The project is evolving through consultations with many stakeholders, including:
• Canadian Library Association (read statement)
• Canadian Association of Research Libraries (read statement)
• Industry Canada through Digital Canada 150

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Archives and Special Collections, Data Files, Digital Preservation, Libraries, News, Preservation