Month: September 2014

Survey on Fugitive Canadian Government Information

This survey is being conducted by a working group of the Canadian Government Information Private LOCKSS Network (CGI-PLN) in order to learn more about how institutions are collecting fugitive materials and, if they are, how these materials are being identified and preserved. The CGI-PLN will use this information to help set web harvesting priorities.

A fugitive document is a “document” published by a government agency but not collected and distributed by an official depository program.

For the purpose of this survey we are focusing on documents produced by the Government of Canada. In this context, fugitive documents include all types and formats of digital materials including press releases published as HTML pages, reports published as MS Word documents or PDFs, digital maps from the Atlas of Canada, databases such as Trade Online from Industry Canada, audio and video recordings, etc.

Click here to complete the survey!

Parliamentary budgets & Librarians: An interview with Kevin Page

Article posted in Open Shelf, available here.

Q: What is the relationship between the PBO and the Library of Parliament (LoP)? How much interaction did you have with the library and its librarians when you were there?

A: The PBO was created by an Act of Parliament (Accountability Act) in December of 2006. Canada was not ready to make the PBO an independent office of Parliament, so administratively, it reports to the LoP. There are similarities in the things that both the PBO and the LoP do: They both provide research services to Parliament for instance, so there is symmetry there. But it is not always a natural fit. Although research support is common to both, LoP has a confidential model—if a Member of Parliament (MP) needs information for a private member’s bill or needs to prepare for a committee, librarians provide confidential support. The PBO is more of an accountability model and provides independent opinion. If the PBO continues to exist, it should be outside of the LoP.

Read more…