With the support of members and stakeholders, CRKN identifies, describes, and digitizes documentary heritage to expand and improve the Canadiana Collections: Canadiana and Héritage.
The Canadiana Collections are available at no charge to users thanks to the merger of CRKN and Canadiana.org, and through the three-year commitment made by CRKN members to the Heritage Content Access and Preservation (HCAP) fund. The HCAP fund is a redirection of CRKN member Canadiana.org subscriptions and membership fees, or for those who did not subscribe to Canadiana, a set annual fee, to fund the ongoing support and development of Canadiana content and the Trustworthy Digital Repository (TDR) platform. To learn more about contributing to the Heritage Content Access and Preservation fund, contact us at info@crkn.ca.
The strategic growth of the Canadiana Collections is overseen by the Preservation and Access Committee (PAC) and the PAC’s task groups, the Heritage Content Priorities Task Group (HCPTG) and the Platform Technical Sub-Committee (PTSC).
The HCPTG released its final report in November 2020. The report outlines principles, criteria and recommendations for guiding the development of the Canadiana Collections and CRKN’s heritage services (digitization, hosting and preservation) with the goal of ensuring that the collections and services remain vital and continue to meet member and stakeholder needs. The report can be found here. For more information, please contact digitization@crkn.ca.
Canadiana
The Canadiana collection contains over 19 million pages (96,000 titles) of digitized historical publications, including monographs, serials, and government publications. The collection is largely composed of materials published prior to 1921, including content digitized from the Canadian Institute for Historic Microreproductions (CIHM) microfiche series.
CRKN is continuing to expand the collection while prioritizing at-risk materials, high interest archival collections, newspapers, and content that is representative of the diversity of the Canadian population.
Search the Canadiana collection
Héritage
The Héritage collection is a joint project supported by CRKN members and Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and draws from the rich resources of archival microfilm held by Library and Archives Canada. Héritage includes 41 million pages (over 900 collections) from some of Canada's most popular archival collections chronicling the country and its people from the 17th to the mid-20th centuries. The majority of the material in Héritage is handwritten.
CRKN and LAC continue to work together to develop the collection, with approximately 100,000 pages added annually.
Search the Héritage collection
For questions about the Canadiana Collections or for assistance in using the collections, please email info@crkn.ca.