Alouette Canada Open Digitization Initiative officially launches

It’s time for Canada’s history to be accessed and preserved in a systematic, enduring way – one that is accessible for Canadians – and other citizens of the world. AlouetteCanada hopes to fill that role.

“Our vision is that Canadians will be able to know themselves through their heritage and the world will have the opportunity to better know Canadians.” declared John Teskey, President of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. “Our common aim is to provide easy online access to the extraordinary wealth of written and other records by and about Canadians.” 

“Libraries, archives, museums and other interested communities are all invited to play their part,” stated Carole Moore, Chair of the AlouetteCanada Steering Committee. “The aim is to develop a coordinated plan for online access to Canada’s recorded heritage.”

This is an open invitation for everyone who is willing and able to come and play their own unique part in developing our collective Canadian online memory. We would like to hear from local history societies, archives organizations, genealogists and others across the country.

from CARL - AlouetteCanada Open Digitization Strategy Launched (PDF) - June 21, 2006

They have a website now at

http://www.alouettecanada.ca/

CISTI's Mary Low is on the Communications and Marketing Committee, and CISTI DG Bernard Dumouchel is on the Charter Projects Committee.

Technical Committee members include

• Peter Binkley (Quædam cuiusdam)
• Mark Jordan (digitizationblog)
• Art Rhyno (LibraryCog)
• Mike Ridley (Towards the Information Ecology)

(Please let me know if there's anyone's blog I've missed.)

Is it just me, or do librarians love committees?

Previously:
December 29, 2005  digitization for Canadian books: Alouette

Comments

[jmnlman]

very interesting particularly if Gutenberg Canada ever gets off the ground. Would seem to be direct competition which is good I suppose. Of course if they're just going to make PDF files then it's not useful. We shall see.