Background
- The contract for a new digital asset management system (DAMS) was awarded to TeraMach on August 1, 2018 (five-year contract with an option to renew for 10 additional years), and provides for the use of Preservica as the principal solution.
- The solution Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is developing in collaboration with TeraMach and Preservica will enable LAC to efficiently receive, review, preserve, and make available digital objects and their associated metadata from our various client groups.
- Procurement and deployment of a DAMS is a key commitment for LAC, as outlined in LAC’s long-term digital strategy.
Considerations
- LAC is taking a multi-year phased approach to deployment to manage complexity and data volume, starting with workstreams related to Published Heritage, and then moving to Government of Canada (GC) records from GCdocs, followed by GC records from other channels, private archival records, and finally LAC-digitized content and data tape migrations.
- This phased approach began in 2018-19 with the successful testing of the solution with 40 Canadian publishing institutions, including universities, commercial publishers, small publishers, and GC institutions.
- LAC is preparing to launch the previously validated Published Heritage workflows later in 2019-20; these include new transfers of eTheses, monographs, serials, public opinion research, and federal publications.
- LAC is also preparing to test the solution later in 2019-20 with GC institutions using GCdocs. This work is done in collaboration with Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), and involves Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), Environment Canada (EC), the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying (OCL), and Statistics Canada (SC).
Key Public Messages
- LAC will more effectively receive, review, preserve, and make available digital objects and their associated information from our various client groups through this new system.
- Canadian publishing institutions will be the first to benefit from the new solution later this fiscal year, with new and easy-to-use web forms that allow publishers to submit multiple publications and their information in a single submission. This content will be securely held by LAC and made discoverable to the public via our public catalogue.
SME:
Sylvain Bélanger, Director General Digital Operations and Preservation
Email: sylvain.belanger@canada.ca
Tel: 613-882-3935