The West Beyond the West BC Libraries Archives

The West Beyond the West: BC Libraries, Archives, Museums, and Alouette. Canada April, 2007 British Columbia

What is Alouette. Canada? A multi-type, collaborative service that provides: – A Digitization Tool Set – A Search and Discovery service – An Interactive Portal to help Canadians to Find, Use, Share and Expand on the content

Who we are • Non-profit and NGO • Membership driven – institutions and collaboratives • Representational board – – – Academic and public libraries Archives Museums LAC, CHIN, CCA CIDL CARL [raised over $250, 000 for first year] • Variety of subcommittees and working groups – Technical, Tool kit/standards, marketing, fund raising, charter projects, evaluation • Secretariat assistance from CARL

Built on a shared vision… § Library and Archives Canada Canadian Digital Information Strategy § Canadian Initiative on Digital Libraries Digital Canada numérique § Canadian Association of Research Libraries and partners – Alouette. Canada

The Promise of Alouette. Canada One navigation and resource discovery system to find: • existing and future digital collections from libraries, archives, galleries, museums, and historical societies • a rich range of multimedia, such as digitized phonograph recordings, film clips, maps, artifacts, photographs, paintings, diaries, posters, books, and public records.

The Promise of Alouette. Canada Canadians and the international community will be able to powerfully and easily browse, search and navigate Alouette. Canada’s collections With Web 2. 0 features, Canadians will be able to bring value to the each other by being able to contribute original content and to assemble content in new ways and share it with the rest of the world

Alouette. Canada Simplified Functional Framework Collection level records Search Finding Aids (context) Video Images Text Audio (1 -1) Books Letters Manuscripts (1 -many) = existing Serials (1 -many in sequence) = working on

Simplified National Aggregation Model Alouette. Canada National aggregator e. g. Artefacts Canada National aggregator e. g. Virtual Museum of Canada Special Direct e. g. National Gallery Provincial level aggregator Library Archive Museum Special

Alouette. Canada Data Relationships and ‘views’ Alouette. Canada Provincial: The West Beyond the West Regional or University Municipal site or Campus level Local Library, Archive, Museum, Historical Society or individual project

Alouette. Canada Online Toolset Option Step 1. User selects from x broad choices on which formats they choose to digitize and index Step 2. User is assigned their own account then selects from a reasonably small set of specific profiling choices Step 3. User uploads files singly or in batches to Alouette. Canada server etc. Alouette. Canada Step 4. User enters metadata directly on Alouette. Canada server where it is instantly available for searching or further editing Alouette. Canada

Alouette. Canada Upload Scenario: PUSH vs Harvest (to be developed) Step 1. User selects from x broad choices e. g. XML, METS, DC Step 2. Answer z questions about your data structure, organization and collection - This sets profile for future reloads and supplements Step 3. Upload to lockbox FTP holding tank Uploader Holding directory Regional collector? Step 4. Application ingests and maps data to standard schema Mapper Step 5. Application incorporates new records into indexes; generate reports and errors Alouette. Canada Indexer

User Interface with many ‘views’ User Interface Alouette. Canada, Our Future Our. Ontario. ca Our Past , etc Trusted Repository Partners Images Canada Knowledge Ontario Provincial/Regional Servers for Provincial Servers for Storage, Maintenance and Access to Digital Objects Format types Archeion Early Canadiana Online Our Roots Other Charter Projects §TIFFs §JPGs §PDFs §WMV §MPEG §etc Peel Prairie Provices Scan, digitize and pass through ingestion normalization layer Smaller agencies and individuals work directly through web interface Pass through ingestion normalization layer Digimobile online and off Local newspapers Largest agencies eg. SFU, Glenbow, UNB scan, digitize and work directly on local system of choice Local systems: Commercial or locally developed Other agencies scan, digitize and work directly on local system of choice

Charter Projects

Benefits of “membership” in Alouette. Canada • Empowers smaller libraries to manage data directly online with practical, web-based digital tools to assist with their digitization projects • Helps you to ‘publish’ your unique and valuable collection to the web and help it to be found along with other such content gathered from across Canada • Acts as national cross-sector finding aid plus local data management and web site service • All data able to be exported for use in research, harvesting or migration to next generation system • Uses latest open source solutions • Scalable for sharing at national level

Why Does the University Support Alouette. Canada? Alouette. Canada is a service that benefits every University directly by: – Providing a single place for Canadians to find your content and share their research results with others – Providing a valuable clearing house on standards and best practices – Providing valuable assistance to your provincial service providers and metadata aggregators such as your provincial “view”

Credit to… Marnie Swanson Lynn Copeland Chris Hives Chris Petter Lara Wilson Ian Forsyth Mark Jordan Anita Cocchia Lisa Codd Jacqueline van Dyk Walter Lewis Art Rhyno Diane Bedard Alouette. Canada Technical Committee

For… • The beginning of a coordinated effort among archives, libraries and museums throughout BC • The loading of the first batch of archival records from SFU and BCAUL and… • The launch of a brand new web site for searching BC content!

Alouette. Canada in 2010

User interfaces and services Specialized Views • • The “Portal” will provide a ‘launch’ point for our searchers to explore the national ‘collection’ in totality wide variety of many specialized sub-views as well – limited only by our imaginations and themes that will make sense as easier starting points depending on our user needs

Specialized Views • • Provincial and other geographical divisions Scholarly sub-divisions based on identified needs First Nations history and current experience in all aspects Divisions by format such as Images, Newspapers, and specialized sub-sets such as a Virtual National Portrait Gallery Transportation: Water, Aviation, Rail, Automobile Industry and Innovation Education in general such as historical and thematic such as War, Immigration experience, Westward Expansion, Industrial Expansion, the Fur Trade, the Acadian Experience and more Genealogical space for family research

“My Account” Users will be able to interact with the discovery portal and collection contents as well as each other in a wide variety of ways:

“My Account” • • Personal space to track research, save lists of favourites and ‘discoveries’ and make recommendations on various topics Interact with others and set up communities of interest Create temporary and permanent virtual exhibitions, online books, journals and research records for others to see, add to and interact with from anywhere in Alouette. Canada and beyond Space to save research topics of common interest for genealogists, historians, etc.

Interconnections with other web services Alouette. Canada will not exist in isolation - it will work with international agencies and services that are popular with users around the world to make their content even more discoverable and convenient to use:

Interconnections with other web services • • • YAHOO! FLICKR – 2 way discovery, input, tagging and comments Youtube – for videos Second Life – as a virtual exhibition space Google Maps and Earth – to enhance spatial searching and display Internet Archives and Google Books – to link users to digitization efforts elsewhere Michael and other international discovery portals

Infrastructure • • Distributed server and application architecture for a variety of benefits: Security and preservation of content and metadata through a LOCKSS-style approach Load balancing No single point of failure Decentralized budget and less susceptibility to a single negative budgetary impact

Infrastructure Smart software ‘Agents’ : • middle layers that work with the Toolkit apps and the distributed central indexing processes • manages traffic and data distribution

Infrastructure ‘Open’ underlying architecture and clearly understood standards so that any agency can take raw output from search results and build their own user interface and generate their own specialized search and display systems

Relationships Alouette. Canada will not be a ‘third party’ agency working at arm’s length from its partners – it will be thought of as a vital part of the business plan of every agency and ally across the country:

Relationships • • • Alouette. Canada is “owned” by all of the various partner allies as natural extensions of their own specialized services Some services like ‘Virtual Portrait Gallery’ may be created by separate agencies on top of the Alouette. Canada portal software as their own services Alouette. Canada will continue to expand its alliance with content holders and creators of all types such as publishing, broadcasting and the scientific community

Special events and promotion • • • Order of Alouette awarded to high profile Canadians and outstanding supporters Invitation to famous Canadians to use and then describe their experiences Family genealogical promotions around ‘naming’ people in family and regimental photos Extensive work with Education field to promote use of Alouette. Canada in curriculum Special national days like “Canada Reads”

Scope: “One Place to Start your Search” • In order to ensure that Alouette. Canada becomes Canada’s “Search Here First” site • It will develop a system of intelligent ‘gateways’ and links into other major discovery services that rely more heavily on pure metadata such as AMICUS until the day when the majority of collections have been digitized.

Brian Bell Director Tel : 905. 847. 2352 Email: bbell@oakville. ca Katherine Mc. Colgan Project Coordinator Tel : 613. 562. 5800 x 2768 Email : Katherine. Mc. Colgan@u. Ottawa. ca