Librarian Developing Government Information Digitization Project

By Alan Kilpatrick

Margaret Wall, a librarian at the University of Toronto, is currently developing an online registry of Canadian government information digitization projects.  Her ambitious goal is to create a single access point to all digitized government information, valuable to researchers and librarians.  This registry will serve as a convenient resource for those searching for government records that have been digitized.  Additionally, it will enable libraries digitizing government records to easily collaborate with others also digitizing government information.

You can find more information about this exciting project at govinforegistry.blogspot.ca.  It’s yet another example of the library community stepping up, promoting access to information, and creating value.

A similar exciting project was initiated by Sam-chin Li, the Reference & Government Information Librarian at the University of Toronto, in 2014.  The project is seeking to locate“fugitive” government documents.  Fugitive documents described as documents not collected by the Government of Canada’s official depository program.

Projects like this fly in the face of the common myth that “everything is on the internet now.”  Digitization and preservation of information in our digital world is complex and challenging work.  It’s a task that librarians and libraries are supremely suited to.