Canada's national archives being dismantled and scattered

Cory Doctorow 5:45 pm Sun May 27, 2012

A reader writes,

The Canadian government is slowly doing away with Canada's ability to access its own history.

Library and Archives Canada's collection is being decentralized and scattered across the country, often to private institutions, which will limit access, making research difficult or next impossible. It should be noted that Daniel Caron, the new National Archivist hired in 2009, doesn't even have a background in library nor archives but, a background in economics.

"The changes and cuts are being justified by reference to digitization. A generous estimate is only 4% of the LAC collection has been digitized to date — a poor record that will be made worse by the cuts announced on April 30, 2012, which reduced digitization staff by 50%."

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