From an Article in the Toronto Star by Michael Geist:
In the absence of national leadership, a loosely connected coalition of local and provincial digitization initiatives have begun to take shape.
The LAC [Library and Archives Canada] may not be prepared to lead on a national digital library, but it is beefing up its digital collection. For example, by the end of the year, Canadians will be able to access digitized images of original census documents from 1861 and 1871, which contain the name, age, country or province of birth, nationality, religion, and occupation of Canadians at the time.
In Quebec, the Quebec Library and Archives is working toward digitizing all published and archival documentary heritage produced in the province since the 17th century with approximately ten million objects digitized thus far.
The University of Toronto has been actively working with Internet Archive Canada to digitize about 300,000 public-domain books. Meanwhile, the University of Alberta’s Peel’s Prairie Provinces digital collection has digitized nearly 3 million articles from 73 different newspapers.
Other universities from coast to coast have provincially-focused digitization initiatives. Memorial University’s Digital Archives Initiative focuses on Newfoundland and Labrador, the University of Saskatchewan has a collection of digitized items including poetry, Saskatchewan post cards, magazines, books, paintings and historical documents, and Simon Fraser University has digitized 250,000 pages of the Chinese Times daily newspaper, which was published in Vancouver from 1914 to 1992.
Via Resource Shelf
