The Wrecking of Canada's Library and Archives

[grammafreddy]

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/06/07/Li ... ign=070612

The Wrecking of Canada's Library and Archives

Thirteen ways the Harper government's planned cuts will swamp the mission of our heritage keepers.

By Myron Groover, Today, TheTyee.ca



Budget blasts holes in the vessel that stores the nation's history and carries it to the public. Image: Shutterstock.

The ongoing cuts and changes to service delivery at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) continue to be a source of consternation for Canada's archival community and to the users of Canada's documentary heritage. It's quite easy to get carried away on a tide of outrage around these issues, though, and so I present here a brief summary of the proposed changes themselves so readers can have an idea what's going on.

First, a brief refresher on LAC's mandate:

"The objects of the Library and Archives of Canada are (a) to acquire and preserve the documentary heritage; (b) to make that heritage known to Canadians and to anyone with an interest in Canada and to facilitate access to it; (c) to be the permanent repository of publications of the Government of Canada and of government and ministerial records that are of historical or archival value; (d) to facilitate the management of information by government institutions; (e) to coordinate the library services of government institutions; and (f) to support the development of the library and archival communities."

In light of this, let's look at the broader organizational changes which affect the whole institution, now headed by an individual, politically appointed in 2009, who is neither an archivist nor a librarian.

1. Hours and services for on-site reference are being cut to six hours a day (weekdays only); reference services will no longer be available without a formal appointment.

2. One out of five positions to be axed. Four hundred and fifty staff have been presented with "affected" notices announcing they will effectively need to re-apply for their own positions; of these, 215 will be eliminated. This amounts to around 1/5 of LAC's total workforce. These cuts include:

Twenty-one of 61 archivists dealing with non-governmental records will be eliminated;

Fifty per cent of digitization staff will be eliminated;

Fifty per cent of circulation staff for analog holdings will be eliminated;

Thirty per cent of cataloguing librarians will be eliminated;

Thirty per cent of library technicians working in collection development will be eliminated;

The professionals previously responsible for loans and exhibitions, microfilm preservation and imaging, digital preservation, preservation registry, textual and visual conservation, multicultural publications, and rare/out-of-print publications will be fired; the archivist positions responsible for cartography, moving images and sound, aboriginal treaties and affairs, art and photo archives, and the multicultural portfolio are already vacant.

Staff dealing with preservation and conservation of documents will see "significant" reduction.

3. Interlibrary loans will be completely eliminated by February 2013, meaning that LAC's services as library of record for all books published in Canada will only be available on-site in Ottawa.

4. A new "whole of society model," developed in secret and without any apparent public oversight or input, will be used to guide (and partly automate) archival holdings and acquisitions.

5. An official 10-month moratorium on purchased archival holdings announced in March 2009 has extended, unofficially, into a three-year lapse on acquisitions -- dozens of historical documents now leave Canada each day, never to return. No end to this situation is in sight.

6. Online access to holdings will be more difficult, because online archival descriptions will be reduced from 25 information fields to 10.

7. Key money-making program eliminated. The National Archival Development Program (NADP), which serves to support the archival enterprise across Canada, is being eliminated -- even though that program generates an average of 150 per cent return (in direct and in-kind contributions) on every federal dollar spent on project development.

8. Virtually all funding is being withdrawn from the Canadian Council on Archives, the body responsible for Canada's national standards on archival arrangement and description and for administering the NADP.

9. Collapsed councils across Canada. The impact of the NADP cut will be most keenly and immediately felt by communities across Canada, as 11 of the 13 provincial and territorial archives councils are projected to collapse within six months without additional financial support.

10. Ninety projects in communities cancelled. Also resulting from the NADP cut, 90 fully approved projects for the 2012-2013 year have been retroactively cancelled across Canada.

11. Archival professionals in provinces to be fired. Also stemming from the NADP cut, 17 archival professionals will lose their jobs. Among them, 11 archives advisors and conservators will be eliminated. These had previously been stationed in every province to provide free cooperative extension services in support of small heritage institutions around the country; without them many institutions now have access to no professional expertise and will be left to care for their holdings without any support. Six other staff at the CCA Secretariat tasked with the administrative business of the CCA will be shown the door.

12. Leading edge ArchivesCanada.ca threatened. The imminent launch of ArchivesCanada.ca, a revolutionary national-level hub for all archival descriptions in the country, is now seriously at risk. The CCA is urgently seeking additional financial support to ensure the project can be completed.

13. Canada's credibility on heritage issues at home and abroad will be undermined now that the participation of Canada in the National Archival Appraisal Board, the North American Archival Network and the International Council on Archives is seriously threatened.

I will take only a few moments to discuss the rationale behind these decisions, as the specifics of that rationale tend to change from day to day depending on who the management of LAC is talking to. Generally speaking, there has been no admission on behalf of LAC that these organizational changes will be detrimental to Canada's ability to preserve and disseminate its cultural heritage; any challenges will be addressed by private industry and by a renewed focus on 'digitization' and 'decentralization.'

No one, especially at LAC, seems quite certain how these efforts are to be paid for or made possible, especially given that digitization is one of the most expensive and time-consuming aspects of archival work. Counter-intuitively, LAC instead plans to eliminate half its staff working in digitization and has apparently backed down from an ambitious plan to develop a Trusted Digital Repository in which to store digital materials (the plan has not been modified since 2008).

LAC has, however, proposed a "Pan-Canadian Documentary Heritage Forum" in order to facilitate a dialogue about decentralizing the responsibility for Canada's heritage. The Association of Canadian Archivists withdrew from the forum last week among allegations that professional organizations were being asked to act as a rubber stamp on decisions made without consultation by LAC management.

When presented with facts and figures like those listed above, LAC has instead tended to assure those making inquiries that everything is in hand and that asking for detailed cost analyses and projections for service provision is not reasonable since consultation with stakeholders is still ongoing and ministerial communications are confidential. Very little transparency around any of these changes is in evidence to the untrained eye -- perhaps the Librarian and Archivist of Canada will explain why when he speaks on the subject of "What is Needed to Make Transparency Meaningful in a Digital Age?" in Edmonton later this month.

The reaction to these cuts from the academy and from the professional communities of librarians and archivists has been uniformly negative -- Canadian archivists even went so far as to organize an "Archivist's Trek" to Ottawa where a mock funeral for the National Archival Development Program was held on the steps of LAC. A campaign to oppose these changes has been organized by the Canadian Association of University Teachers; meanwhile, a petition to save the NADP has garnered almost 6,000 signatures. Supporters of these efforts have been encouraged to voice their opposition to the cuts by writing to their MPs and to Heritage Minister James Moore.

At this point, perhaps it's best if I refrain from further analysis and leave readers to make up their own minds about what these changes mean for Canada's past -- and its future. [Tyee]

Myron Groover is an archivist at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. He holds an MA (Hons) in History from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and both a Master of Archival Studies and Master of Library and Information Studies from UBC.

Now, of course I realize this is the Tyee ... but can anyone from any side of the political spectrum justify this? Is there any other reports that deal with the reasoning behind it? Is this just the Tyee getting ranty again about Harper and the Conservatives?

I am a huge supporter of museums, archives and libraries and public access to them. A country's history (accurately told and documented even if it hurts some politician's image) is very important for future generations. We need funding for this kind of thing - IMO. I'm not a huge supporter of fluffy things, but this isn't one of the fluffy things that should be cut.

[grammafreddy]

removed - Jennylives

If anyone can find some balance to the topic, I'd appreciate reading it.

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/06/06/Ar ... nada-Cuts/

Why Did Harper Cut Canada's Library and Archives?

Tory explanations don't add up, so here are three possible reasons.

By Donald Gutstein, Yesterday, TheTyee.ca


If national records get in the way of a good story, cut access.

Why would the Harper government cut Canada's Library and Archives budget?

Heritage Minister James Moore explained the 10 per cent overall cut would not hurt the agency because records could be digitized and made available to Canadians via the Internet.

But the 2012 budget cut the digitization staff by 50 per cent.

If that doesn't add up, then let's examine some other reasons the Conservatives led by Stephen Harper may have decided to reduce public access to the nation's archival records.

1. Who needs national records when you have the Bible?

Stephen Harper has to satisfy his party's evangelical base. As well, since 2006 Harper has been a member of Ottawa's Eastgate Alliance church, which is affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. The statement of faith of this church declares that:

"The Old and New Testaments, inerrant as originally given, were verbally inspired by God and are a complete revelation of His will for the salvation of people. They constitute the divine and only rule of Christian faith and practice."

Inerrant. Period. Goodbye archives.

2. Who needs facts if they screw up your favourite story?

There's the history that can be discovered through archival research, and there's the Harper government-sanctioned history. Some historians use archival records to understand Canada's social history, which emphasizes issues like race, ethnicity, gender and class. This is the wrong history. Even the Globe and Mail editorial board is unhappy with it. In an editorial written nearly 10 years ago, the Globe complained that "schoolchildren learn all about the story of women, the story of natives, the story of the labour movement, but little about the story of the country as a whole."

The Harper government is telling its version of that story. The key document is Canada's new citizenship guide, Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, which was released with great fanfare in 2009.

The Globe liked this booklet, calling it "a welcome move that places a new and appropriate emphasis on Canada's history and personalities." Gone from Canada's history were women, natives and labour. In their place were the prime ministers, the great moments and war.

A tabulation of words used in the guide provides a useful insight into Harper-authorized history.

The word "unions" doesn't appear in the guide, for instance. This is curious, given that 4.2 million Canadian workers, or nearly 30 per cent of the workforce, are union members.

The word "feminist" is blanked from the guide. There are no prisons or prisoners in the new Canada, no poverty, no landlords or tenants and no rich or wealthy Canadians. The word "unemployment" is used four times, but for historical references only, the most recent being the introduction of unemployment insurance in 1940. Apparently, unemployment has not been a problem since.

You won't find "medicare" in the guide, and "housing" is used only once. "Environment" is used nine times, but never in relation to environmental issues. There are no concerns about climate change or global warming in our fair "Dominion" (this word is used 16 times).

The word "women" is used 13 times and, while this may seem like a lot, seven of the references occur in one historical paragraph about women getting the vote.

"War," meanwhile, is used 55 times.

To prove war is important to Canadians, Harper's government is spending $28 million to help us realize that the War of 1812 was an event of "great national significance."

If we don't have access to Canada's historical record, the Citizenship Guide will be the official rendition.

3. Who needs history when you're selling ideology?

Limiting access to Canada's actual archives makes it easier to promote revisionist histories like The Canadian Century, a book written by Harper government allies -- three libertarian economists with no formal historical training.

Authors are Brian Lee Crowley, head of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, Niels Veldhuis, who now heads the Fraser Institute, and Jason Clemens, who once worked for the Fraser Institute and now is at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. They are among Canada's elite economic conservatives.

They claim Canada was a free-market society at the beginning of the 20th century, got sidetracked into social democracy during the middle and returned to its free-market ways under Harper at the beginning of the 21st century.

The striking thing about this book is that the authors do not reference even one historical record or document. Apparently they don't need archives.

The book hinges on Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canada's seventh prime minister (1896-1911). The authors claim Laurier had a plan for Canada.

"(Laurier) thought it vital to preserve and protect the institutions brought to Canada by our forbears, the 'British liberty' composed of the rule of law, free speech, freedom of conscience and religion, respect of minority rights, habeas corpus, parliamentary self-government, minimal state interference, low taxes and respect of property and of contract."

It's quite the shopping list and while some of the items sound as if they may have been thought of by Laurier, others, especially the ones tacked onto the end -- minimal state interference, low taxes and respect of property and contract -- sound more like Harper government-Fraser Institute agenda items.

So what did Laurier actually think? The authors helpfully provide a footnote for their "Laurier thought" sentence. You would expect the footnote to refer to a speech Laurier gave or a letter he had written, some document the economists might have obtained from the National Archives that laid out his plan.

You would be wrong if you expected this. The footnote refers to something once said by neo-liberal economist Douglass North about how important having minimal state interference and low taxes was for economic growth -- the same tired old neo-liberal rhetoric.

As for what Laurier said, thought or wrote, nada. You get the idea. It's the new Harper-type history.

If Harper is creating our future, then our past just gets in the way.


Donald Gutstein is an adjunct professor and co-director of NewsWatch Canada in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University and author of Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy. Find his website here.

[Captain Awesome]

removed off topic - Jennylives

[erinmore3775]

GF thank you for bringing this to everyone's attention. However, I am willing to bet that the only ripple that this thread will cause is related to the reporting methods of TheTyee.
I am also willing to bet that in just a few years Canada will rue these changes. Canada is not a very old country. Its history is not contained in multiple castles, palaces, museums, and libraries. This library was set up to be a central depository and the digitialization of its acquisitions was designed to provide all Canadian communities with access to this information. This will become very important as settlements continue to be negotiated with our Native Aboriginal popualtions and attempts are made to solidify our claim of our northern lands.
Unfortunately, across the broad fiscal cuts to solve the deficit problem often do not have a view of the future past the end of the percentage sign.

[The Green Barbarian]

removed off topic - Jennylives

[threadbear]

!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hobbyguy]

I think one of the reasons is that very few people even know of the existense of the website.

I didn't, and I just tried it and found it to be very clunky.

[grammafreddy]

I think one of the reasons is that very few people even know of the existense of the website.

I didn't, and I just tried it and found it to be very clunky.

Then the answer is to do something to better inform the people about their National Archives - not axe and decimate the damn things!

[steven lloyd]

GF thank you for bringing this to everyone's attention. However, I am willing to bet that the only ripple that this thread will cause is related to the reporting methods of TheTyee.

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=41544

You certainly nailed that one erin

[The Green Barbarian]

You certainly nailed that one erin

:127: