Library and Archives Canada

This document outlines a Canadian National Heritage Digitization Strategy, providing a unifying framework for multi-institutional digitization projects for Canadian documentary heritage. The strategy focuses on accelerating digitization for discovery, access, and preservation by identifying standards, sharing best practices, protecting at-risk materials, avoiding duplication, and developing funding opportunities. Key areas of focus include historical published heritage, scientific journals, microfilm, audio-visual recordings, archival fonds, historical maps, and genealogical materials. It establishes a secretariat for coordination and a National Steering Committee for governance, aiming to reposition Canada in the digital era by making its cultural and scientific heritage easily accessible and contributing to national development.

Vision 2030 outlines Library and Archives Canada's strategic direction to enhance access to its collections and guide its mission for the rest of the decade. Key priorities include users and access to collections, with a vision centered on 'Discover, Understand, Connect'. The plan aims to facilitate access to diverse and inclusive collections, raise public awareness, and foster connections around Canadian experiences, cultures, communities, and history, ultimately improving the acquisition, processing, preservation, and accessibility of Canada's documentary heritage.

The German National Library's strategic priorities for 2021-2024 aim to fulfill its memory function by expanding digital collections and developing attractive, user-friendly forms of presentation. The plan focuses on investing in digital indexing processes, promoting cross-disciplinary networking and cooperation between culture and science, and fostering its development as a learning organization. The long-term goal is to have all collections completely available in digital form, enabling new insights through data mining and machine learning for research, culture, and society.

This document outlines the National Archives of Australia's policy responses to e-government challenges, framed under the 'Digital Continuity 2020' initiative. Key pillars include mandating that all born-digital records remain digital, requiring IT systems to comply with ISO 16175 standards, implementing digital workflows to eliminate paper-based approvals, and ensuring data and metadata interoperability across government. The strategy also focuses on rethinking appraisal to capture economic value from administrative data and professionalizing information management roles within the civil service. The overarching goal is to secure information immortality, preserve national memory, and ensure government accountability in a digital age.

The session focused on the Summit on the Value of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAMs), specifically addressing communication towards funders and policymakers. Key challenges discussed included the lack of understanding among political figures regarding GLAM goals, the necessity of face-to-face interaction for impact, difficulties in communicating relevant outcomes (such as focusing on issues like poverty reduction), language barriers between political and professional discourse, limited funding availability, and silo mentality within government levels. Participants stressed the importance of having readily available data and a compelling narrative. Discussions also touched upon structuring findings around relationship building (face-to-face), data availability and usage, and the narrative (storytelling vs. data). Further points included the disparity between GLAM organizations (haves and have-nots), and exploring well-being as a metric, contrasting service orientation versus community building in certain regions like Quebec. The need for a centralized toolkit and leveraging collaborations (e.g., between museums and galleries) were highlighted.